Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New HygieneSinclair, Upton
Science
Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene
Sinclair, Upton
Hygiene
We ourselves have faced these difficulties in many forms. We have
wished to have two meals, and yet felt obliged to have three, because
all our friends had them, and we did not wish to be hermits. We have
wished to avoid meat, and yet have eaten it, because it was on the
table, and we did not like to startle our hostess—and perhaps find
ourselves involved in an argument about vegetarianism, in the course
of which we had either to permit a good cause to go down into defeat,
or else to tell facts about meat which would take away every one’s
appetite for meat, and for vegetables as well. But in the end, the
desire for health has conquered all other motives with us, and we have
broken with every trace of the old ways. It seemed to us that we would
help and interest others if we gave some account of how the new ideas
have worked out in practice, and the daily regimen of a family which
adopts them.
This book is written in Bermuda, where the writers have been living in
co-operation, along the lines worked out at Helicon Hall, only upon
a much smaller scale. Their party consists of eight adults and three
children—this including two governesses, a secretary, and a servant.
They live in an isolated neighborhood, upon the waterfront. Most of the
party sleep out of doors on the broad verandas of the house, while the
wide doors and windows of the other rooms afford ample ventilation.
Daily sea-bathing is the habit of all of the group.
The married women of the party assume in turn the direction of our
dietaries; that is to say, they choose the menus, and attend to the
ordering of the food supplies. We eat but twice a day, and the menus
are made up entirely of fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with the
occasional use of eggs. We obtain from the Battle Creek Sanitarium a
great number of the foods we use, availing ourselves of its splendidly
managed food-department. The children eat three times a day, but
their breakfasts are very light, consisting of orange juice and a fig
or two, or perhaps a banana. The children have this light breakfast
immediately after arising. At ten o’clock comes the principal meal of
the day for the whole household. An effort is made to make this meal
“well balanced”; that is to say, to have the proportion of proteids,
carbohydrates and fats. There are usually not more than two, or at the
most, three cooked dishes. Sometimes the main dish is a soup; sometimes
it is baked or boiled macaroni with tomato dressing; sometimes it is
bean or pea croquettes; sometimes it is scrambled eggs, or the yolks of
hard boiled eggs.
We have a constant supply of fresh vegetables, the justly celebrated
Bermuda onion; beets, turnips, egg plant, raw cabbage, potatoes, white
and sweet, rice, hominy, green peas, tomatoes, and lettuce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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