The acid of sour apples is an excellent corrective for foul conditions of the stomach, such as exist in biliousness. The germs of typhoid, of cholera, and others likely to produce acute disease, are quickly killed by solutions of citric and malic acids, the acids of the lemon or the apple. The juice of a lemon added to an ounce of water will render that water sterile within half an hour, even though it may contain the germs of typhoid fever and cholera. The antiseptic properties of fruit juice render it exceedingly valuable as a means of killing the germs in the stomach and the alimentary canal; a fact which explains the benefits derived from various “fruit cures,” which have been for many years practiced in Europe, and more recently have been employed in various parts of the United States.
The indigestion which many people complain of as arising from the use of fruit comes not from fruit in itself, but from its improper use in combination with other foods with which it does not agree. It is sometimes supposed, for instance, that fruits conduce to bowel disorders; but the truth is that an exclusive diet of fruit is one of the best known remedies for chronic bowel disorders. Care should be taken, however, to avoid fruit juices which contain a large amount of cane sugar; only the juices of sweet fruits should be employed, or else a mixture of sour and sweet fruit juices without sugar. Raisins, figs, prunes, sweet apples and sweet pears may be mixed with sour fruits. Fruit that is sweetened with sugar to a large extent is indigestible, since cane sugar often proves an irritant: while the combination of cream and sugar which is so often used with many fruits is a very bad one. Fruits should be eaten with vegetables only if both are thoroughly masticated, for the reason that the cellulose in vegetables takes a long time to digest, while fruit takes a very short time, and is held in the stomach and ferments. Fruit combines well with cereal foods, breads, and the like, and with nuts.
WHAT COOKING DOES FOR GRAINS
Cooking does for grains what the sun does for fruit; it performs a preliminary digestion. In undergoing digestion the starch in food passes through five stages: first, it is converted into amylodextrin, or soluble starch; second, erythrod extrin; third, achroödextrin; fourth, maltose; and fifth, levulose, or fruit sugar. Cooking can carry the starch through the first three of these processes, rendering it ready for almost instant conversion into maltose, on coming into contact with the saliva in mouth and stomach. In the intestine maltose is converted into levulose or fruit sugar and the process of digestion is completed. Modern science has shown by experiments that the preliminary digestive work done by cooking varies greatly with the method of cooking adopted. There are practically three methods used in the cooking of cereals, kettle cooking (that is, boiling and steaming), over cooking, or roasting, and toasting, or dry cooking. Kettle cooking changes the raw starch into soluble starch; in other words, it carries the starch through the first step of the digestive process. Baking, or very prolonged kettle cooking, will convert the starch into erythrodextrin, the second stage of starch digestion. Toasting, or dry cooking, in which the starch is exposed to a temperature of about 300 Fahrenheit, advances the starch one step farther, yet.
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.