The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition by A. W. Duncan (readict TXT) 📕

the extensive use of common salt or sodium chloride. It is in all ordinary shop bread, in large quantity in a special and much advertised cereal food, even in a largely sold wheat flour, and often in pastry. It is added to nearly all savoury vegetable food, and many persons, not content, add still more at the time of eating. No dinner table is considered complete without one or more salt-cellars. Some take even threequarters of an ounce, or an ounce per day. The question is not, of course, whether salt is necessary or not, but whether there is a sufficient quantity already existing in our foods. Some allege that there is an essential difference between added salt and that natural to raw foods. That the former is inorganic, non-assimilable and even poisonous; whilst the latter is organised or in organic combination and nutritive. The writer is far from being convinced that there is a difference in food value. Some herbivorous animals are attracted by salt, but not the carnivora. This has been explained by the fact that potassium salts are characteristic of plants, whilst sodium chloride is the principal saline constituents of blood and of flesh. In their food, the herbivora take three or four times as much potash salts as the carnivora. Of course, the sodium chloride in the flesh of the herbivora and frugivora is obtained from the vegetable matter forming their food, and very few of them have the opportunity of obtaining it from salt-licks and mineral sources. They must have the power of storing up the sodium chloride from plants in sufficient quantity, whilst the potash salts pass away. There is no justification for saying that they are worse off by being deprived of salt. If the ape tribe can thrive without added salt why should not man? Bunge considers that a restriction to vegetable food causes a great desire for salt. Opposed to this, is the fact that certain tribes of negroes who cannot obtain salt, add to their vegetable food wood ashes or a preparation of wood ashes; this is chiefly potash. One preparation used in British Central Africa was found to contain about 21 per cent. of potassium chloride to only 0.5 per cent. of sodium chloride. It has been said that vegetarians consume more salt than those who take flesh food. We doubt this; we know of many vegetarians who have a strong objection to added salt, and have abstained from it for years. Some find that it predisposes to colds, causes skin irritation and other symptoms. At many vegetarian restaurants the food is exceedingly salty; the writer on this account cannot partake of their savoury dishes, except with displeasure. Nearly all who patronise these restaurants are accustomed to flesh foods, and it is their taste which has to be catered for. Flesh, and particularly blood, which of course, is in flesh, contains a considerable quantity of sodium chloride; and most flesh eaters are also in the habit of using the salt cellar. These people are accustomed to a stimulating diet, and have not a proper appreciation of the mildly flavoured unseasoned vegetable foods. Only those who have, for a time, discontinued the use of added salt, and lost any craving for it, can know how pleasant vegetables can be; even those vegetables which before were thought to be nearly tasteless, unless seasoned, are found to have very distinct flavours. It is then perceived, that there is a much greater variety in such foods than was previously imagined. It is commonly urged that salt and other condiments are necessary to make food palatable and to stimulate the digestive functions. We, on the contrary, say that condiments are the cause of much over-eating; and that if food cannot be eaten without them, it is a sign of disorganisation of the digestive system, and it is better to abstain from food until the appearance of a natural and healthy appetite. An excess of salt creates thirst and means more work for the kidneys in separating it from the blood prior to its expulsion. Even should it be admitted, that certain vegetables contain too little sodium salts, a very little salt added to such food would be sufficient; there is no excuse for the general use of it, and in such a great variety of foods. It is thought that some cases of inflammation of the kidneys originate in excessive salt eating; certain it is that patients suffering from the disease very soon improve, on being placed on a dietary free from added salt and also poor in naturally contained sodium and potassium salts. It is also possible to cause the swelling of the legs (oedema), to which such invalids are subject, to disappear and reappear at will, by withdrawing and afterwards resuming salt-containing foods. The quantity of one-third of an ounce, added to the usual diet, has after a continuation of several days, produced oedema. In one patient, on a diet of nearly two pounds of potatoes, with flesh, but without added salt, the oedemia disappeared and the albumin in the urine diminished. As potatoes are particularly rich in potash salts, this case is significant, as showing contrary to expectations, that such quantity as they contained had not the irritating effect of added common salt. Salt and other chlorides have been shown by several observers, to be injurious, not only in diseases of the kidneys, but also of the liver and heart. In these diseases the excess of salt is retained in the tissues, it causes a flow of fluid into them, and so produces oedema and favours the increase of dropsy. The good effect of milk in such diseases has long been known; it is probably due to its relative poverty in sodium and potassium chlorides. Even in the case of three healthy men, by an abrupt change from a diet extremely rich in chlorides to one deficient, they were able to reduce the body-weight by as much as two kilos. (4 lbs. 6 oz.); this was by the loss of an excess of water from their connective tissues. Sodium chloride diminishes the solvent action of water on uric acid and the urates; but potassium salts, on the contrary, do not, they may even increase the action. Although nearly all the medical experience recorded has to do with diseased persons, such cases are instructive; it is only reasonable to suppose, that more than a very small quantity of salt in excess of that natural to the food, is a source of irritation in the body, even of the ordinarily healthy individual.

Summary.—Enjoyment of food is dependent upon appetite quite as much as upon the nature of the food. Better a simple repast with good appetite than sumptuous fare with bad digestion. There is indeed a causal relationship between simplicity and health. The savage likes the noise of the tom-tom or the clatter of wooden instruments: what a contrast this is to the trained ear of the musician. Uncivilised man has little enjoyment of scenery or of animal life, except as in respect to their power of providing him with food, clothing or other physical gratification. What an enormous advance has taken place. In the case of the painter, his eye and mind can appreciate a wide range and delicacy of colour. Man has improved on the crab-apple and the wild strawberry. From a wild grass he has produced the large-grained nutritious wheat. Vegetables of all kinds have been greatly improved by long continued cultivation. In tropical and sub-tropical climates, where wild fruits are more plentiful, high cultivation is of less importance than in temperate regions. In sparsely inhabited or wild, temperate and cold regions, in times past, when deer and other animals were plentiful, and edible fruits few, flesh could be obtained at less labour; or such intelligence and industry as is required for the cultivation of fruits, cereals, and other foods scarcely existed. Flesh almost requires to be cooked to be palatable, certainly this much improves its flavour. The eating of flesh tends to produce a distaste for mild vegetable foods, especially if uncooked. In process of time, not only flesh but vegetable foods, were more and more subjected to cooking and seasoning, or mixed with the flesh, blood or viscera of the animals killed. Next, food was manufactured to produce a still greater variety, to increase the flavour, or less frequently to produce an imagined greater digestibility or nutritiveness. Man has taken that which seemed most agreeable, rarely has he been intentionally guided by scientific principles, by that which is really best. Only of late years can it be said that there is such a thing as a science of dietetics; although cookery books innumerable have abounded. Of recent years many diseases have enormously increased, some even seem to be new. Digestive disturbances, dental caries, appendicitis, gout, rheumatism, diabetes, nervous complaints, heart disease, baldness and a host of other diseases are due, in a great measure, to abuse of food. One of the most learned and original of scientific men, Professor Elie Metchnikoff, in his remarkable book on "The Nature of Man," referring to the variety of food and its complexity of preparation says that it "militates against physiological old age and that the simpler food of the uncivilised races is better.... Most of the complicated dishes provided in the homes, hotels and restaurants of the rich, stimulate the organs of digestion and secretion in a harmful way. It would be true progress to abandon modern cuisine and to go back to the simpler dishes of our ancestors." A few have lived to a hundred years, and physiologists, including Metchnikoff, see no inherent reason why all men, apart from accident, should not do so. Most men are old at 70, some even at 60; if we could add 20 or 30 years to our lives, what an immense gain it would be. Instead of a man being in his prime, a useful member of the community, from about 25 to 60 or perhaps to 70; he would have the same physical and mental vigour to 80 or 90 or even longer. This later period would be the most valuable part of his life, as he would be using and adding to the accumulated experience and knowledge of the earlier period.

Some, perceiving the mischief wrought by luxurious habits, urge us to go back to nature, to eat natural food. This is ambiguous. To speak of animals as being in a state of nature, conveys the distinct idea of their living according to their own instinct and reason, uninterfered with, in any way, by man. The phrase, applied to man, is either meaningless, or has a meaning varying with the views of each speaker. If it has any definite meaning, it must surely be the giving way to the animal impulses and instincts; to cast off all the artifices of civilisation, to give up all that the arts and sciences have done for man, all that he has acquired with enormous labour, through countless failures and successes, during hundreds of thousands of years, and to fall back to the lowest savagery—even the savages known to us use art in fashioning their arms, clothing and shelter, to the time when man was a mere animal. Civilised man is not only an animal, but an intellectual and spiritual being, and it is as natural for him to clothe himself as for a cow to eat grass. Our intellect has been made to wait on our animal nature, whilst our spiritual has lagged far behind. Animal food and all else of a stimulating character, stimulates the lower nature of man, his selfish propensities; whilst mild food makes it easier to lead a pure life. In the treatment of habitual drunkards in retreats, it has been found that a permanent cure is rare upon the usual abundant flesh dietary. Only by the use of vegetable food, particularly farinaceous, can a permanent cure be assured. The editor of