EFFECTS OF COOKING FOOD.

In all nature there are two great forces working, as it were, against each other; namely, construction and destruction. That is to say, nature is, on the one hand, assembling together certain elements and building them into forms we call life, and on the other it is breaking down, changing and dissipating these elements, which process we call death or destruction.

In the process of construction, the vegetable or plant takes up from the mineral kingdom inorganic matter, and converts it into organic or living matter, such as is found in fruits, nuts, cereals,—the natural foods of man. It is only through this process that mineral elements can build or become a part of animal life.

One of the most potent and effective agencies known to change and demolish materials is fire. When we apply it to our food in the process of cooking, it results in such a change as destroys the elementary plant form, and the mineral elements return to their inorganic condition. It cannot be otherwise, insomuch as it possesses absolutely no element of construction.

At about 145° F. certain properties in plant life are destroyed. For instance, a leaf of cabbage, if emersed in water that can easily be endured by the bare hand, will wilt, showing that part of its cellular life is destroyed at that temperature.

The heat can be increased until all plant life is destroyed. This becomes important when we remember that animal life is supported and entirely constructed from plant life. The living plant possesses all the elements from which animal life is made. Therefore, the question would naturally arise in the mind of any thinking person, “Why destroy in part the plant life before feeding it to the animal? In what possible way can the application of heat improve it?” Our education, our science and learning, are of small value, if they do not teach us how to build the highest form of animal life from the material used.

Many articles of our food are subjected to an intense dry heat, ranging from 300° to 400° F., in the vain hope that in some way they may be improved. Bread browned in an oven is partly changed to ashes. It is half destroyed. Were it kept there twice as long it would be wholly destroyed.

Yet millions of people insist on eating those supercooked foods. They insist on wheat being made into Zwieback, which might be described as a bit of ashes held together by a little gluten, without ever spending one moment in thinking of the real difference in food value, between this stuff and the grain in its original state.

Of all the curious customs into which people have evolved, cooking seems to be the strangest and to possess the least excuse for existence. It has made of woman a slave. It has made of the stomach a potpourri for everything living or dead. It so changes the properties of foods that no chemist living can analyze them. It is the chief cause of mixing food products, which is the principal cause of overeating, which, in its turn, is the genesis of nearly all stomach and intestinal disorders. It has changed man into an omnivorous, and in some cases into a carnivorous animal.