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From: Kim Pollard <>
Subject: [HACKETT-L] What to eat in 1897
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:36:27 -0500

Sorry, about that folks. I was informed that most people didn't get the
message.
Kim Pollard

What To Eat

Some Sensible Suggestions That Should Be Posted
in Every Household

Aristonite, writing in that excellent gastronomic
journal, What to Eat, makes a few sensible suggestions
in regard to the diet that ought to be posted in every
household. He says that the healthiest and purest lives
comes from those who d not eat meat before the age of 15.

Potatoes, sliced thin and fried, are indigestible. While
tasting delicious, they afford no real nourishment and
cause a derangement of the liver.

Cake clogs the stomach. All rich pastries is poison to the
liver. Soft caramels and creams are also bad for anyone
with a liver at all rebellious.

When you get old, look out for your food. Do you ever notice
that grandfather’s face is not as jolly as it used to be? His
strength of mind also seems slowly disappearing, though he
is getting fleshier every day. He needs a change of food.
Probably he has been eating buckwheat cakes and sirup,
white bread and butter, sugar fat meats, etc. Give him lean
meat and fish, cracked wheat and potatoes, barley, cakes,
rye bread or southern corn cakes.

Try it, and instead of moping and sitting round the house all
day you will find him running around lively as a cricket.

Maybe, on the contrary, he is growing thin and pale. Then he
needs buckwheat and molasses, fat meats, mashed potatoes
in milk, southern corn, cracked wheat and fish, oatmeal
porridge and fruit every morning.

All rules have their exceptions, and the died described for the
mass may not answer for exceptional cases, but the following
directions are good for the majority.

Milk is the simplest and most natural food. If you cannot drink
it, your stomach is in a diseased condition. Cheese is a good
substitute, if mild, fresh and made from pure milk and cream.
Persons who live mostly on vegetables have the best nerves and
the best complexions. Red pepper is an excellent condiment. Its
effect upon the liver is remarkable. Malaria, intermittent fever
or congestive chills cannot endure the presence of red pepper.
Pure red pepper (known as cayenne) should be on every table.

Ill health is caused largely by improper food or by food which is in
a bad condition when it is eaten.

The West Duluth Sun July 29, 1897

[Othe than not seeing any reference to tofu or bean sprouts, this
seems like pretty sound advice, even today].


Ray Marshall

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