FOOD PRODUCTS.

That type of life to which man belongs, if traced chronologically from age to age, and geographically from land to land, will be found to have originated in the tropics, or the warmer belts of the earth’s surface. His primitive food was plants.

As the ages progressed and he ascended a little farther up in the scale of evolution, he added fruits, and further on nuts, to his dietary. So far as his physical needs were concerned, this combination, plants, fruits and nuts, composed the most perfect diet he has ever subsisted upon.

There are numerous forms of anthropoidal life in these southern climes that bear testimony to the wonderful strength, agility and endurance that can be builded from these simple foods. In some parts of Africa there is a type of gorilla which subsists entirely upon these foods in their natural state, and which can twist with his two hands the barrel of a Springfield rifle into a shapeless mass in an instant.

Every step that man has taken in the long and devious road of civilization, added to his love of travel and romance, and his instinctive curiosity, and unsatisfied desire for something—anything he did not possess.

Every step that he took beyond the limits of his own country involved the question of food. Especially as he migrated northward the storing of food products to tide him over from season to season became a question of very great importance, one that involved the question of life and death. All the faculties were employed almost wholly in his endeavor to solve this one dominant question. He began to think, to study, to experiment.

He had emigrated beyond the limits of his native land, where he could live from the bountiful prodigality of nature. He found himself confronted by all the hazardous vicissitudes of climate and vegetation. Roots, herbs and every vegetable thing was tested as food, and during periods of famine and hunger, in sheer desperation he slew and preyed upon even animal life.

It is certain that the custom of flesh eating among the ancients began with the direst necessity, with the choice between that or death by starvation.

The first cereal product known to history was a small seed or berry, the product of a wild grass called sativa or sativum. From triticum sativum was developed the wheat plant; from orysa sativa came the rice. These two great staples came substantially from the same root. The one planted in the more northern latitudes produced the wheat, while the same plant in the tropical and semi-tropical regions developed the rice.

It was during the time that man was sorely put to it to find and produce foods which he could store for winter use, probably, that foods classed as legumes, that is to say, every product that grows in a pod, of the bean and pea variety, became so highly developed and universally used. There are about 7,000 species in the legume family contained in about 450 different genera.

The enormous variety of things that could be used as food because they would sustain life, which had been discovered by mankind in his more primitive years, were passed on from generation to generation and mixed, crossed and combined to appease the appetite of the wealthier classes. Besides this extensive bill of fare that had been discovered and compiled from necessity, the earth’s surface was again scoured to find things that would tickle the palate of the priests and rulers of the Oriental world.

The natural trend of civilization is to group people together in communities, settlements and cities. The natural tendency of this, under ancient, and even our present social system, was to concentrate wealth, the result of which is always the division of society into two classes, namely, producers and non-producers.

This condition left its mark upon the inhabitants of ancient cities. Idleness sought employment and entertainment in many forms of dissipation, the most prominent of which was feasting—eating and drinking. The ancient Romans at their feasts would eat as long as they could comfortably sit up, and then lie down, and in this position finish their feast. Then they would repair to a vomitorium, where they would disgorge themselves.

The result of this was mental and physical decay among the wealthier classes. It was at this time that Augustus Cæsar was changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, and she was boasting that her art, language and literature were ornamenting and civilizing the world, when in reality among her wealthier classes was being sown the seeds of her ultimate decline.

Our present methods of sustaining life from food are but a mirror made from the fragments of man’s past and curious history, in which the student can see reflected through the ages that have gone the primitive man and the food and habits which brought him to such a high degree of physical perfection.

During the whole life of primitive man he would not eat more than a half dozen different varieties of food, while it is estimated that the average American can select from 1,000 articles.

It would be impossible, as well as useless, to try to enumerate all the articles used as food, and especially to attempt to give their analyses or nutritive values. All we wish to show are the reasons why man has become so omnivorous. We want to make him think. We merely want to give him material out of which he can weave his own conclusions.

We want no one to accept our theories of the food question without thorough investigation and study. If he does, he will eternally be wavering between two opinions, and like all those who bestride great questions, will never accomplish anything of value on either side.