Healthy Food : Part 1

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 10 of 45)

The person who decides what should be the food and drink of a family and the modes of its preparation, is the one who decides, to a greater or less extent, what should be the health of that family. It is the opinion of most medical men, that intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death. If this be so, the woman who wisely adapts the food and cooking of her family to the laws of health removes one of the greatest risks which threatens the lives of those under her care.

But, unfortunately, there is no other duty that has been involved in more doubt and perplexity. Were one to believe all that is said and written on this subject, the conclusion probably would be, that there is not one solitary article of food on God's earth which it is Healthy to eat. Happily, however, there are general principles on this subject which, if understood and applied, will prove a safe guide to any woman of common sense; and it is the object of the following chapter to set forth these principles.

All material things on earth, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, can be resolved into sixty-two simple substances, only fourteen of which are in the human body; and these, in certain proportions, in all mankind.

Thus, in a man weighing 154 lbs. are found, 111 lbs. oxygen gas and 14 lbs. hydrogen gas, which, united, form water; 21 lbs. carbon; 3 lbs. 8 oz. nitrogen gas; 1 lb. 12 oz. 190 grs. phosphorus; 2 lbs. calcium, the chief ingredient of bones; 2 oz. fluorine; 2 oz. 219 grs. sulphur; 2 oz 47 grs. chlorine; 2 oz. 116 grs. sodium; 100 grs. iron; 290 grs. potassium; 12 grs. magnesium; and 2 grs. silicon.

These simple substances are constantly passing out of the body through the lungs, skin and other excreting organs.

It is found that certain of these simple elements are used for one part of the body and others for other parts and this in certain regular proportions. therefore, carbon is the chief element of fat and also supplies the fuel that combines with oxygen in the capillaries to produce animal heat. The nitrogen which we gain from our food and the air is the chief element of muscle; phosphorus is the chief element of brain and nerves; and calcium or lime is the hard portion of the bones. Iron is an important element of blood and silicon supplies the hardest parts of the teeth, nails and hair.

Water, which is composed of the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, is the largest portion of the body, forming its fluids; there is four times as much of carbon as there is of nitrogen in the body; while there is only two percent as much phosphorus as carbon. A man weighing one hundred and fifty-four pounds, who leads an active life, takes into his stomach daily from two to three pounds of solid food and from five to six pounds of liquid. At the same time he takes into his lungs, daily, four or five thousand gallons of air. This amounts to three thousand pounds of nutriment received through stomach and lungs and then expelled from the body, in one year; or about twenty times the man's own weight.

The change goes on in every minute point of the body, though in some parts much faster than in others; as set forth in the piquant and sprightly language of Dr. O. W. Holmes, who, giving a vivid picture of the constant decay and renewal of the body, says:

"Every organized being always lives immersed in a strong solution of its own elements."

"Sometimes, as in the case of the air-plant, the solution contains all its elements; but in higher plants and in animals generally, some of the principal ones only. Take our own bodies and we find the atmosphere contains the oxygen and the nitrogen, of which we are so largely made up, as its chief constituents; the hydrogen, also, in its watery vapor; the carbon, in its carbonic acid. What our air-bath does not furnish us, we must take in the form of nourishment, supplied through the digestive organs. But the first food we take, after we have set up for ourselves, is air and the last food we take is air also.

We are all chameleons in our diet, as we are all salamanders in our habitats, inasmuch as we live always in the fire of our own smoldering combustion; a gentle but constant flame, fanned every day by the same forty hogsheads of air which furnish us not with our daily bread, which we can live more than a day without touching, but with our momentary and oftener than momentary, aliment, without which we can not live five minutes."

"We are perishing and being born again at every instant. We do literally enter over and over again into the womb of that great mother, from whom we get our bones and flesh and blood and marrow. 'I die daily' is true of all that live. If we cease to die, particle by particle and to be born anew in the same proportion, the whole movement of life comes to an end and swift, universal, irreparable decay resolves our frames into the parent elements."

"The products of the internal fire which consumes us over and over again every year, pass off mainly in smoke and steam from the lungs and the skin. The smoke is only invisible, because the combustion is so perfect. The steam is plain enough in our breaths on a frosty morning; and an over-driven horse will show us, on a larger scale, the cloud that is always arising from own bodies."

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.