The Mysteries Food

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 10, 1 April 1926, Page 54

The Mysteries Food

tßy MAURICE LANE NORCOTT Aire we eating good, nourishing and wholesome food nowadays F AhCany say we eat what food cranks dictate is the correct diet A Writer in “ London Opinion ” entertainingly discusses the virtues ” of calories vitamines, albumen and such like in humorous vein.

It is all very well for politicians and journalists and food “specialists” to tell us that what is poisoning our people to-day is the fearful Bolshevic propaganda that is going on in our midst, but is it the fearful Bolshevic propaganda? We men of the world often walk about for days and days without coming across a single piece of Bolshevic propaganda, and even if we did come across some we should only scowl at it and pass by on the, other side like parasites and singers. We should never let it enter into our blood and turn our white corpuscles red. Yet the fact remains that something is making us poisonous just now. What is it? In my opinion, it is the food that is causing all our internal troubles to-day. Food has become altogether too scientific. In fact, strictly speaking, it isn’t food at all now. It is just a chemical compound to be swallowed three times a day with a little liquid, such as near-beer, or hardly-port, or rarely-whisky. TT used to be quite different fifty or sixty years ago, when everybody was thoroughly ignorant and healthy. Food was very strong meat then and most delicious to eat, on account of its being solid all through. It didn’t consist of little particles of this and little molecules of the other in those days. Steak was simply steak and potatoes potatoes, and if they weren’t there was a fearful row about it. A man wouldn’t be palmed off with a lot of calories and trash then. If he had thought that there were such things in his meat he would have taken it back to the butcher at once. “Here” he would have said roughly. “What do you mean by sending me round such stuff? Just you cut me a bit of real steak instantly, and let s have no more of your nonsense !” Oh, they were very bluff, outspoken men fifty or sixty years ago! They wouldn’t have tolerated calories for a moment. They wanted something they could get their teeth into. If they couldn’t get their teeth into it they didn’t want it, no matter what it was. v ou see? These fine old men were absolutely unhampered by science. They never took chemistry with their food. Day after day they sat down to table and ate real steak-and-kidney pies, real roast beef, real roly-poly puddings, real cheese, and real biscuits. No wonder they grew up strong and dogged and won the battle of Waterloo, or

whatever it was. They were so wellnourished. We aren’t well-nourished. We may thnk that we are, but we aren’t, really. We eat such ridiculous things; things that hadn’t been invented fifty or sixty years ago. Instead of enjoying delicious luncheons as our fathers used to do, we just sit down and toy with a few proteids, followed by a little plate of vitamines with some farinaceous matter on the side, and perhaps a piece of starch or a cup of alkaline to finish off with. It is enough to kill us, I think. T>ESIDES, what are these things, •*“* anyway? Vitamines, for instance. What are vitamines? It is all very well for scientists to tell us that vitamines are marvellous little things found in food that give off energy when eaten, but how can we be sure of that? It doesn’t sound very probable. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiM

€ri!ii!iutiiii!!iiiin!ii!auniniiiiiiiiii:iiii!niiii:i!ii!iiiii!!ii;iiii!iii:iini!i;i!;iir:::iiiiii:iii!i:i.:n;!ii:!i!iin:iiiKn;iinnr.;ii!i:i;!iiiiir.iniiiimuii^ Personally, I rather doubt if there is such a thing as a vitamine. After all, nobody has ever seen one. Well, not actually. I dare say a man here and there may think that he has seen a vitamine after a Masonic banquet or a reunion gathering, but he hasn’t, really. It wasn’t actually sitting on a pork pie washing its ears with its feet. It didn’t really hiss venomously at him when he went “shoo!’’ to it, or peck him savagely on the nose with its wicked, hooked beak. He just imagined that it did. The scarce]y-champagne was responsible for it all. TF there is such a thing as a vita-mine-—and I don’t absolutely deny its existence it must be a germ. Otherwise how could it get into our food? Very likely there is a minute vitamine moth that flutters about the meadows at night and lays its eggs in the verdant grass with the deepest cunning. Then in the morning the poor, stupid cows come out and swallow the grass, little suspecting

that that is just what the clever, subtle moth wanted them to do. Naturally, the delicious warmth of the cow’s interior acts as a perfect incubator and it isn’t very long before the baby vitamines hatch out in their millions and thrive on the rich milk. Then when the milkman calls in the afternoon we buy a jugful. Proteids, I dare say, are different. They may be of the vegetable kingdom, like primulas, and peonies, and potatoes. Or even more probably they are just little weeds that grow in farinaceous soil, such as porridge. How the roots come to be there, of course, I can’t say for certain, but that is porridge all over. The stuff is one of Nature’s greatest mysteries. You can’t possibly understand it. It is too Scotch. You must either leave it or lump it. That is, unless they have lumped it in the kitchen already. If so, leave it. A NOTHER very dreadful substance, to my mind, is albumen. Quite a lot of people, I expect, think that albumuen is just a polite word for “stomach.” It isn’t, though. That is abdomen. Albumen is starch or Gloz and is found in Rinso, cheese-cakes and other compounds.

It is either a by-product of coal tar, like soap or asphalt, or it is the sticky extract of glucose, and is used for the manufacture of saccharine, seccotine, and the rough side of sandpaper. It is true that people eat it to-day, but fifty or sixty years ago a gentleman who was a gentleman invariably left his albumen on the side of his plate. TT is the same with carbon. Noth- -*• ing would have induced our fathers to eat carbon. They didn’t mind using it for their lead pencils and they blackened their faces with it at parties, but they knew just where to draw the line. They never took it with their meals. To-day people eat anything, even sago. No wonder that our constitution is undermined. It isn’t undermined with Bolshevism, though. Not really. What is destroying it is calories, vitamines, proteids and such trash. TheyBut I mustn’t write any more now. My supper is ready. It is just like bread and cheese to look at, but I ' know it isn’t, because science has been playing about with it. At heart it is only starch and vitamines. How utterly depressing 1

| EASILY PLEASED | i Methuselah ate what he found on p H his plate, 1 p And never, as people now do, 1 U Did he note the amount of the cal- 1 m oric count g H He ate even if it was stew. j| p He wasn’t disturbed, as at dinner % 1 he sat, H B Destroying a roast or a pie, ’ 1 H To think it was lacking in granular m H fat, U B Or a couple of vitamines shy. 1 p He cheerfully chewed every species J p of food, a p Untroubled by worries or fears Jj p Lest his health might be hurt by B M some fancy dessert— 1 1 And he lived over nine hundred g p years! g