The Food Question: Health and Economy — John Shaqi
The Food Question: Health and EconomyVarious
General
The Food Question: Health and Economy
Various
Food
To serve a dessert, when one is deemed necessary, for its food value
and as a part of a balanced ration.
To bake or boil potatoes in the skins, in order to preserve the mineral
salts.
To utilize for soups and gravies the water in which vegetables,
macaroni, and rice are boiled.
To serve only one food of high protein value at a meal.
To feed to animals nothing that can be utilized by the human body.
To allow vegetables, grains, and legumes to ripen, that their full food
value may be obtained, and that the expense of canning may be avoided.
To can or dry all fruits and vegetables that cannot be preserved in any
other way.
To substitute other cereals for wheat, which can be shipped abroad.
A wheatless meal every day will drive many to appreciate the value
of other grains, whose use heretofore has been largely perverted.
Corn, rye, barley, and oats are not appreciated as they should be.
They have been used largely in the manufacture of intoxicating drinks
and for feeding animals to procure meat. It has been said that the
Revolutionary War was won by men fed on hasty pudding--in other words,
corn meal mush. Learn to eat bread made from corn, rye, or oats, or a
mixture of these grains. Form the habit of eating these more economical
breads; then continue the practice. Such breads are far superior to the
ordinary denatured white bread. If a dog is fed only white bread, death
will result sooner than if it is fed nothing.
_The Call of the Country_
Land in Europe that for centuries was used to gratify the abnormal
tastes of plutocrats and the aristocracy, is now being made to produce
wholesome food to meet the world's needs. In America, people are still
deprived of their divine right to a simple home, because millions of
acres of land are held in a similar manner.
Schools and churches should encourage the cultivation of vacant city
lots. City people may thus learn the secret of intensive farming. It
may give some courage to make a home on a few acres of land and to
raise the food for their own tables. Every turn in a congested center
calls for an outlay of means. Modern methods of living are unnatural
and extravagant. In the city, every article of food costs in proportion
to its distance from the base of supplies. Transportation must be added
to the original cost of production; the jobber, the wholesaler, the
commission merchant, the retailer, the delivery man, and the baker must
all have their profits.
Get out of the cities; get onto the land! Why not preach this part of
the gospel? Help people to understand that the unnatural appetites and
the desires for artificial food are penalties paid very largely by
those who seek to maintain themselves by their wits. One mighty step
has been taken toward the prevention of waste and in economy's favor
when men learn to earn their bread in the sweat of their face while
tilling the soil.
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