VARIETY IN FOOD
VARIETY IN FOOD.
Simplicity of diet should be a point of first
consideration with all persons upon whom falls the responsibility of
providing the family bills of fare, since the simplest foods are, as a
rule, the most healthful. Variety is needed; that is, a judicious
mingling of fruits, grains, and vegetables; but the general tendency is
to supply our tables with too many kinds and to prepare each dish in the
most elaborate manner, until, in many households, the cooking of food
has come to be almost the chief end of life. While the preparation of
food should be looked upon as of so much importance as to demand the
most careful consideration and thought as to its suitability,
wholesomeness, nutritive qualities, and digestibility, it should by no
means be made to usurp the larger share of one’s time, when simpler
foods and less labor would afford the partakers equal nourishment and
strength.
A great variety of foods at one meal exerts a potent influence in
creating a love of eating, and is likewise a constant temptation to
overeat. Let us have well-cooked, nutritious, and palatable food, and
plenty of it; variety from day to day, but not too great a variety at
each meal.
The prevalent custom of loading the table with a great number of viands,
upon occasions when guests are to be entertained in our homes, is one to
be deplored, since it is neither conducive to good health nor necessary
to good cheer, but on the contrary is still laborious and expensive a
practice that many are debarred from social intercourse because they
cannot afford to entertain after the fashion of their neighbors. Upon
this subject a well-known writer has aptly said: “Simplify cookery, thus
reducing the cost of living, and how many longing individuals would
thereby be enabled to afford themselves the pleasure of culture and
social intercourse! When the barbarous practice of stuffing one’s guests
shall have been abolished, a social gathering will not then imply, as it
does now, hard labor, expensive outlay, and dyspepsia. Perhaps when that
time arise, we shall be sufficiently civilized to demand pleasures of a
higher sort. True, the entertainments will then, in one sense, be more
costly, as culture is harder to come by than cake. The profusion of
viands now heaped upon the table, betrays poverty of the worst sort.
Having nothing better to offer, we offer victuals; and this we do with
something of that complacent, satisfied air with which some more
northern tribes present their tidbits of whale and walrus.”