ABOLISH THE FRYING PAN!
One important thing to remember in connection with cooking is that fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America is an unmitigated evil. “Of all dietic abominations for which bad cooking is responsible, fried dishes are the most pernicious,” says Dr. Kellogg. “Meat fried, fricasseed, or otherwise cooked in fat, fried bread, fried vegetables, doughnuts, griddle cakes, and all similar combinations of melted fat or other elements of food are most difficult articles of digestion. None but the most stalwart stomach can master such indigestibles. The gastric juice has little more action upon fats than water. Hence a portion of meat or other food saturated with fat is as completely protected from the action of gastric juice as is a foot within a well-oiled boot from the snow and water outside.”
This same reason explains why rich cake, shortened pie crust and pastry generally, as well as warm bread and butter disagree with sick stomachs and are the cause of many diseases. Not only does the interfering with the digestion of the food by its covering of fat set up fermentation, but the chemical changes occasioned in the fat itself develop exceedingly injurious acids which irritate the mucous membrane of the stomach, causing congestion and sometimes even inflammation. The frying-pan is an implement that should be banished from every kitchen in the land.
For many years past America has been deluged with various breakfast foods, the virtues of which have been loudly trumpeted. Yet in the ordinary process of cooking these breakfast foods, oatmeal, cracked wheat, etc., it is seldom that more than half the starch completes even the first stage of conversion. Hence it cannot be acted upon at all by the saliva, which does not begin the process of digestion with raw starch. The use of imperfectly cooked cereals is without doubt responsible for a great share of the dyspepsia prevailing among Americans. Oatmeal porridge, and similar preparations, unless most thoroughly cooked, are not wholesome foods, and when cream and sugar are added, there is a combination calculated to create a marked form of dyspepsia. Cereals must be cooked dry in order to be thoroughly cooked, and when prepared by dry cooking or toasting, they are well adapted to the human stomach, are easily digested and in combination with fruits and nuts, constitute a good dietary. Cereals must not only be cooked dry in order to be promptly digested, but they should also be eaten dry. Experiments show that an ounce of dry, well cooked cereal food when well masticated will produce two ounces of saliva; whereas mush, gruel, and other moist cereal foods cause the secretion of only a very small quantity of saliva, less than one quarter of the amount produced by the same food in a dry state.
In connection with the cooking of cereals, it is well to remember that the chief vegetable proteid, gluten, is also rendered very much more easily digested by thorough cooking. On the other hand, the digestibility of animal proteids, in the form of both meat and eggs, is greatly diminished by cooking.
The potato is another important foodstuff; when it is well cooked it is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of all foods. The starch of the potato is more easily digested than that of cereals, as has been shown by numerous experiments conducted of late in Germany and in America. A good way of preparing potatoes so as to increase their digestibility is to cut them into slices after cooking and then place in an oven until slightly browned; but the admixture of fat of any sort should be avoided.
On the other hand, cabbage is one of those vegetables which is less likely to create stomach trouble when eaten raw than if cooked. The food value of cabbage, however, is so small that it is hardly worth eating, save as a relish. The same remark may be made as to such other foods as celery, spinach, and greens of all sorts. They are only valuable for the sake of the small quantity of mineral salts they contain, and for the sake of adding another taste to the bill of fare. Onions have a higher nutritive value, but this is offset by their containing an irritating volatile oil, which when onions are used too freely may harm the mucous membrane. The onion plays its best part in cookery when used as a flavoring substance.
The mushroom is another article of food, popular among those who can afford it, which modern science shows to be practically unfit for human use. Paradoxically enough, although chemical analysis of mushrooms show them to be so rich in proteids as to earn for them the name of vegetable beefsteak, yet researches have shown that these proteids are not available by the body, and hence that mushrooms have no nutritive value whatsoever.