Sidney Beard - A Comprehensive Guide-Book to Natural, Hygienic and Humane Diet

The following suggestions will prove helpful to those who are desirous of adopting the reformed dietary: —

1. Give up flesh meat at once and entirely – replacing it by dishes made with eggs, cheese, macaroni, peas, lentils, nuts, and nut-meats. Later on you will be able to do without fish also, but it is best to proceed slowly and surely.

2. Eat less rather than more . Fruitarian foods such as the above are more nourishing than butcher's meat.

3. Try to like simple foods, instead of elaborate dishes that require much preparation. Avoid 'frying-panitis.'

4. Eat dry foods rather than sloppy ones; they are more easily digested. Take toast or Granose biscuits with porridge to assist proper salivation. If porridge causes trouble, use wheat or rye flakes (Manhu or Kellogg brands), with hot milk or cream, instead.

5. Do not mix stewed acid fruits with vegetables and legumes; take the former with cereals, cheese, or eggs. Green vegetables should be taken very sparingly, and with savoury dishes alone. If eaten with sweets they are apt to disagree.

6. Persons of sedentary habits should let at least one meal a day consist of uncooked fruit only – or of fruit with brown bread and butter – the bread being well baked .

7. Dried fruits, such as figs, dates, prunes, raisins, sultanas, etc., are very easily digested; and if blended with nuts or almonds they make a perfect meal. Such fruits may be taken freely and with advantage by almost everyone.

8. Nuts should be flaked in a nut-mill to aid digestion; cheese can also be made more easily assimilable in this way (or by cooking). Many nut products are now sold which are malted and partially pre-digested.

9. Give a few hours' thought and study to the important subject of your diet; learn what to do, and what newly-invented scientific foods are obtainable.

10. Do not make the mistake of attempting to live on potatoes, white bread, cabbages, etc., or merely upon the ordinary conventional dietary with the meat left out. Obtain and use well made and well cooked wholemeal bread every day. Take sufficient proteid , 1½ to 2-ozs. per day, to avoid anæmia – indigestion often results from lack of vitality caused through chronic semi-starvation.

11. If you feel any symptoms of dyspepsia, and can trace it to excess in eating, or to dietetic errors, reduce your food, fast temporarily, and take more exercise. Consider what mistakes you have made, and avoid them in the future. Eat only when hungry, in such cases.

12. If you are not getting on, obtain advice from a Doctor who is a fruitarian or from an experienced Food-reformer.

A large number of special proprietary substitutes for animal food can now be obtained to supplement the ordinary ones provided in the household. The latest particulars concerning these can always be known by reference to the advertisement pages of The Herald of the Golden Age , and full information as to their use is supplied by the various manufacturers. But although they are useful and convenient in many households, they are not absolutely essential . 'Home-made' dishes are often the best, being most economical, therefore it is advisable that all food-reformers should learn how to make nut-meats, &c., at home. Some of these substitutes are as follows: —

For Meat-Extracts: Marmite, Vegeton, Carnos, Nutril, Mapleton's Gravy Essence, Cayler's Extract, Wintox.

For Joints of Meat: Protose, Nuttose, Savrose, Fibrose, F.R. Nut-Meat, Vejola, Nuttoria, Shearn's Nut-Meat, Nutton, Brazose, Nuto-Cream Meat, Mapleton's Frittamix.

For Cold Meats: "Pitman" Nut-Meat Brawn, Ellis's Tomato and Nut Paste, Pasta-sol, Lentose, Nuska Viando, Savoury Paste, Potted Beans and Lentils.

For Meat Fat: Nutter Suet, Vegsu, Nutter, Nucoline, and Nut Margarine.

Pine Kernels, which contain 10 ozs. of oil to the pound, and which when rolled and chopped exactly resemble suet, are also an excellent substitute.

Delicious Nut-Butters are also now obtainable for high-class cookery – such as Almond, Walnut, Cashew, and Table Nutter. Although superior, these are as cheap as ordinary cooking butters.

For Lard and Dripping: Nutter, Darlene, Albene, Nut-oil, "Pitman" Vegetable Lard.

For Meat proteid: Emprote, Hygiama, Horlick's Malted Milk, Casumen Dried Milk, Gluten Meal.

For Gelatine: Agar-Agar, or Cayler's Jellies.

For Animal Soups: Mapleton's Nut and proteid Soups, and "Pitman" Vegsal Soups.

Prepared Breakfast Cereals: Manhu flaked Wheat, Rye, Barley and Oats, Kellogg Wheat and Corn Flakes, Granose Flakes and Biscuits, Shredded Wheat, Archeva Rusks, Puffed Wheat, Power, Kornules, Toasted Wheat Flakes, Melarvi Crisps and Biscuits.

For Picnic Hampers: Savage's Nut Foods or Cream o' Nuts, Wallace Cakes and Scones, Mapleton's Nut Meats, Winter's Nut Cream Rolls, "Pitman" Fruit and Nut Cakes and Nut Meat Brawn, Wallace P. R. or Ixion or Artox or "Pitman" Biscuits.

Meat Stockis substituted by vegetable stock, produced by stewing haricots, peas, lentils, etc. The latter is far more nutritious, and is free from the uric acid and excrementitious matter that are present in meat decoctions. A tasty and meaty flavour can be at once given to soups or gravies by adding some vegetable meat-extract selected from one of the varieties already mentioned.

In the following pages recipes will be found for preparing dishes which closely resemble, in taste, appearance, and nutritive value, those to which the community have been accustomed, some of them being of such a nature that persons who are fond of flesh-food find it difficult to detect whether they are eating such or not.

Our food must contain certain elements, and in proper quantity, if the body is to be well sustained, renewed and nourished. These are mainly as follows:

1. Protein to form flesh, build muscle, and produce strength.

2. Fat and Carbohydrates, to provide heat and energy.

3. Salts and minerals (such as phosphates, lime, iron, citrates, etc.) to build bones and teeth, feed the brain and nerves, and purify the body.

No hard-and-fast table or rule can be laid down concerning the proper proportions in which these elements should be combined, because the amount needful for each individual varies according to his size, the sort of work he does, the amount of physical or mental energy he puts forth, and the temperature of the atmosphere surrounding him.

Until Professor Chittenden made his extensive and conclusive series of experiments in America, in 1903-4, to determine the real amount of Protein and other elements required to keep the body in perfect health, the average estimate for a person of average size, who does a moderate amount of physical labour, was about 4-ozs. of Protein per day.

But these official experiments, conducted with scientific precision, extending over a long period, and made with thirty-four typical and carefully graded representatives of physical and mental work, demonstrated that half this amount of Protein is sufficient, and that strength and health are increased when the quantity is thus reduced; also that a smaller amount of Carbohydrate food (bread, etc.), than was previously thought necessary, is enough.

One may therefore now safely reckon that men of average size and weight (say 10 to 12 stone) doing a moderate amount of physical and mental work, can thrive under ordinary circumstances on a daily ration containing about 800 grains of Protein (nearly 2 ozs).