TEA AND COFFEE

In the same laboratory where Dr. Stewart placed his case against alcohol, experiments are being made which show in the same direct way that such drinks as tea and coffee also lower the opsonic power of the blood. Into the United States alone are imported more than one billion pounds, or five hundred thousand tons of tea and coffee each year. It is estimated that tea and coffee contain from three to six per cent. of poison. Therefore, more than fifteen thousand tons of poison, “so deadly that twenty grains might produce fatal results if administered to a full-grown man in a single dose”—in all more than ten billion deadly doses of poison, or, “fully six times as much as would be required to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth,” are brought into this country every year, as component parts of substances which are commonly regarded as pleasant foodstuffs.

This is the case stated against coffee and tea in its broadest and most emphatic form. The opponents of the use of tea drinking term both tea and coffee “drugs.” What is commonly thought to be the pleasantest property of both tea and coffee, namely, their ability to banish one’s sense of fatigue, is regarded by the critics of the tea and coffee drinking habits as perhaps the most sufficient evidence of their poisonous character.

“No one would doubt for a moment,” says one such critic, “the poisonous nature of a drug capable of producing irresistible drowsiness in a person who is not weary, as morphine would, for instance. Vice versa, the power of a drug to produce wakefulness in a person strongly inclined to sleep as the result of fatigue is equal evidence of its poisonous character. The sallow complexion common among women of the higher classes who have reached middle life, the almost universal nervousness among American women, and many common digestive disorders, and the increasing prevalence of nervous or sick headaches, afford to the experienced physician ample evidence of the toxic or poisonous character of tea and coffee.”

Tea and coffee contain (in addition to caffeine) tannic acid, and various other volatile poisons, each of which produces characteristic harmful effects. The volatile oils give rise to nervous excitability, and after a time provoke serious nervous disorders. Caffeine is a narcotic, which has been shown to diminish the activity of the peptic glands—and thus seriously to interfere with the normal operation of the organs of digestion. The eminent physiologist, Wolfe, showed by experiments that three grains of caffeine—an amount that might easily be imbibed in an ordinary cup of tea or coffee—very substantially impairs the quality of the gastric juices, lessening their total acidity. Roberts’ experiments showed that tea and coffee interfere with the action of the saliva upon the starch of the food, and at times may even wholly destroy its effect.

XI
DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY

The reader is now familiar with the new ideas upon the subject of human nutrition. It is obvious, of course, that if these ideas should ever come into general acceptance, there would be enormous changes in the every-day habits of human beings. And we can well imagine that a person might be fully convinced of the soundness of all the arguments which have been advanced in this book, and yet shrink in dismay from the complications incidental to applying them.

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.

We have corn pones, corn bread, brown bread containing oatmeal, ordinary white bread, and oven toast—that is to say, slices of bread baked in the oven until it is brown all the way through. From Battle Creek we have malt honey, malted nuts, ripe olives, olive oil, fig and prune marmalades made without cane sugar, various crackers and grain preparations, and several other nut products. The Sanitarium health-chocolate, a sweet made without the use of cane sugar, and with chocolate divested of its caffeine, also appears on our table. We have eliminated dessert at dinner, having learned not only at Battle Creek, but in the sore school of experience, that the heterogeneous mixtures of cream or milk and cane sugar and various mushy stuffs, along with butter or lard, in the shape of pies and puddings and cakes, are extremely undesirable foods. We find the sweet, pure taste of malt honey an adequate and highly satisfactory substitute.

The Daily Swim

Fruits rarely appear on the table at dinner, since we do not wish to mix them with vegetables. They make their appearance in great abundance at supper, which we have at five o’clock. At this meal we have various cooked fruits, such as prunes or apricots or baked or stewed apples; and of uncooked fruits, oranges, apples, figs, bananas, grapes, and whatever else the market affords. With these we have zweibach and common bread or crackers. At both meals appears Yogurt, an acidulous and agreeable beverage which gratefully checks thirst and in itself nourishes, and is also the vehicle whereby millions of beneficial germs are introduced into the body.

The work of preparing and serving these two meals is done by one person—and that person has time left to play tennis and go in swimming with the rest of us. The total cost of the food is less than thirty dollars a week; cooked and served, its cost is about three dollars and a quarter a week per person. In this connection it should be explained that Bermuda prices, for even the commonest things, are in excess of prices in New York. We pay five cents each for eggs and twelve cents a quart for milk. We have oranges by the barrel, but they come from California, or from Jamaica by way of New York. We have olive oil at four dollars a gallon, and sterilized butter at fifty cents a pound. And in addition the figures quoted include expressage and steamer charges, and ten per cent. duty as well. We mention these things for the light they throw upon the relative costs of the vegetarian and carnivorous life.

The reader will also wish to know about the health of a family living in this manner. When we came here all our children were half-sick from too long contact with cities, and we were not used to the climate, and so one of them caught a severe cold. With this exception there has not been a day’s sickness among them, nor the remotest trace of an ailment. If we were to describe their looks the reader might attribute it to parental blindness, and so the proper plan seems to us to insert a picture of them, and let the reader come to his own conclusions.

For the guidance of any housewife who may wish to try our regimen, we give a few typical menus, and also recipes for some of the favorite dishes of our family. We are all hungry when mealtime comes in our household, and we enjoy the surprises of the menu with all the zest that we ever welcomed roast turkey and pumpkin pies in the old days. And this seems in some magical way to be true, not only of ourselves, but also of such guests as happen along. It is worth noting that three different persons, who have never before known or thought anything about vegetarianism, have stayed with us for periods of several months; and all of them have fallen into the ways of our household, have been well and strong, and untroubled by craving for meat—and in two cases have found, to their great dismay, that they were gaining in weight upon two “low proteid” meals a day!

The first of the tables which follow contains a typical menu for a week; and the second gives an extra list of dinners. The third shows what we do upon some special occasion; it was the banquet which we prepared for Mark Twain—only, alas, his physician had ordered him to be home by sundown, and he couldn’t stay to partake of it.

Inasmuch as all people cannot change their meal hours in accordance with those we have suggested, we give these menus upon the basis of three meals a day, with the various food elements properly balanced. We have also included simple desserts, for the benefit of those who do not care to dispense with this feature. The menus in our own home are similar to these, with the exclusion of the breakfasts and the dessert.[1]

[1] Very good vegetarian cook books are those entitled “Science in the Kitchen,” and “Healthful Cookery,” both of them by Mrs. E. E. Kellogg, the wife of the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Some of the books which are listed in another place as being those which a student of the new art of health may read will also furnish many good recipes. The “Art of Living in Good Health,” by Dr. Daniel S. Sager, will be found especially helpful in this regard. We give in the Appendix three simple menus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. These menus have the food values indicated, and will be found very useful in giving a rough idea of the number of calories contained in ordinary foods.

Monday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Tuesday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Wednesday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Thursday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Friday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Saturday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Sunday
Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Extra Dinners

Recipes

Vegetable soup: Cut in dice three turnips, three carrots, three onions, three potatoes. Cover with water and simmer for thirty minutes. Cook one can of tomatoes, or one quart of fresh tomatoes, strain and thicken a little with flour. Add to vegetables and cook thirty minutes. Add butter and sprinkle with parsley.

Corn pones: Three cups corn meal, 1 heaping teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon butter. Add boiling water until meal is scalded, pat it into flat, thin cakes and bake three-quarters of an hour.

Mayonnaise dressing: Yolk of egg; add 1½ cups olive oil, drop by drop, stirring in one direction. Juice of two small lemons, 1 teaspoon salt.

Macaroni with tomatoes: Half package macaroni; drop into a kettle of boiling water. Boil vigorously for thirty minutes. To one can tomatoes add two onions chopped fine. Simmer until onions are done, then strain and thicken with flour. Put macaroni into colander and rinse with cold water. Add the tomato sauce and simmer gently for fifteen minutes. It is well to do this in double boiler to prevent burning.

Bean or pea soup without meat or pork: Soak two cups of split peas over night. In the morning slice and add two large onions and simmer for several hours. Strain.

Beans baked without pork: Use butter or nut butter instead.

Bean and nut croquettes: Cook dried beans until soft. Strain through colander to remove all skins. Add equal parts of walnut meat ground in chopper; season with salt and a little sage. Mix with beaten egg. Form into croquettes and bake until dry and nicely browned. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.

Baked egg plant: Boil egg plant until tender; pare and mash; mix with bread crumbs and eggs, and bake until nicely browned. A little finely chopped onions may be added if desired.

Peas cutlets: One cup pea pulp, one cup steamed rice, one grated onion, one-half teaspoon sage, one-half cup tomato juice, one-third cup browned flour. Mix together and mold in cakes two-thirds of an inch thick. Bake half an hour. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.

XII
BREATHING AND EXERCISE

We have devoted most of our space to the problems of nutrition, since nutrition is the most important factor in the question of how to keep in health. We wish now to speak of other matters, of great importance in the art of keeping well; these are breathing, bathing, and exercise.

Many people have lived for more than a month without food. You can go for days without water. But if you are deprived of air for but a few minutes, your death is certain. Sixteen to eighteen times a minute the normal person respires, one breath being taken for every four beats of the heart, the central engine of life. Each time you breathe, the amount of air which passes into the lungs is about twenty-five cubic inches; which represent, however, but a small part of the actual capacity of the lungs. The average man can take into the lungs with an ordinary inspiration one hundred or more cubic inches, and is able to force out an equal amount with an ordinary expiration. If you have striven your utmost to expel all the air possible from your lungs, there will still remain about one hundred cubic inches of air within them. The total lung capacity of the average man is about three hundred and twenty-five cubic inches, or nearly one and a half gallons of air.