A Balanced Diet
Some wise motor campers sally forth with hampers stuffed with fruit, sandwiches, grape juice, loganberry juice, lemons, sugar, dates, raisins, nuts, olives, powdered cereal coffee, malted milk, evaporated milk, and salt. A small oil stove and some “canned heat” are included. Fresh eggs, cottage cheese, and vegetables that do not require cooking, like lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes and also fruit, can, as a rule, be bought at farmhouses along the way. Bread may be bought as needed. Whole wheat bread also may be bought in some places, for there is coming to be a demand for this real life-sustaining bread.
Stopping in some attractive place with these supplies, thoroughly sustaining and well-balanced meals can be provided with little work. Eggs may be cooked, and cereal coffee made or hot malted milk prepared. This sort of a menu may not seem like [[114]]a real HE camplike layout, but it will supply a better balance of diet and in addition to the fresh air that the camper gets will do him a vast amount of good both physically and otherwise.
Courtesy, National Park Service
Scene in Mammoth Auto Camp, Yellowstone National Park
Courtesy, National Park Service
Camping ground in Grand Canyon National Park
Such a meal consisting of one or two eggs or cottage cheese, a few nuts, whole wheat bread, olives, lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, apples, pears or peaches, with some dates or raisins, will supply the body’s needs and have as sustaining qualities as meats and rich desserts.
A menu of this description will supply in abundance the iron and lime and other mineral salts, as also the life-promoting vitamines. It will in addition give natural encouragement to bowel activity, and the camper will not have to resort to pills for this purpose.
The change from the usual heavy meals to this simpler and lighter diet will do the average man a world of good.
Then, too, while journeying through the country the motor camper may with profit add to his diet from the green growing things which may be eaten raw. The so-called “raw food fiends” have a degree of fact back of their theory concerning the superior value of raw foods from a nutritive standpoint. Children like to eat the tender young peas that they shell to be cooked for dinner. Most country children like to eat raw turnips, those of the white variety. They also like to nibble tender young carrots, and young sweet corn is sweeter and more tender raw than cooked. Let the motor camper [[115]]try out these foods in the raw. They can be secured from the farmers along the way.
We are aware that most campers will scoff at these suggestions, but if they will test them it will be found that one of the greatest benefits derived will be the laxative effects of this kind of fare.
Those who look upon the suggestions given above as faddish have already found full instructions for preparing the more conventional fare.
Most vegetables may now be bought in the dehydrated form, and these after soaking in water overnight are almost as good as when fresh and form a most desirable addition to the camp menu. As is well known, they have very little weight, and so a large supply may be carried along.
Many prefer powdered milk to the evaporated form for the camp supply box. A supply of sweet chocolate is taken along by many as a quick and satisfying nutriment.
The amount of food to be taken will vary greatly, twelve or fourteen pounds of all kinds per person per week is usually an ample total.