Imperative cooking: bowels
WERE you seta's this morning? I'm sure you were. But according to one of the healthy eating fanatics writing recently, most of Britain is not. Constipation is widespread. The author cites as evidene the fact that many Britons buy consitpation cures, which seems the sort of barmy reasoning one would expect from a healthy eating fanatic. The solution offered to this imagined epidemic is fibre. Well, we Im- perative cooks aren't interested. Our bowels function beautifully on cassoulet with beans in rich goose fat, beetroots chopped hot with olive oil, garlic and parsley, robust red wines and beers such as White Shield Worthington, not to mention wet walnuts and cob nuts. Just by obeying the rules of good taste and eating we get what we need without ever mentioning their scientific constituents.
Among • the non-Imperative classes, there may be constipation but this is clearly a moral problem. My medical dictionary, `by the physicians and surgeons of the principal London hospitals', is quite defi- nite: the most common cause is 'inatten- tion to the calls of Nature, which are too frequently not only ill-obeyed but even set aside by every trivial circumstance'. Women are the worst culprits.
How often does it happen that a lady, finding it not quite convenient to retire to the cabinet at the moment she experiences an admonition, defers it to a more favourable opportunity, but this opportunity having arrived, her efforts are powerless, the bowels will not act and she has, perforce, to aban- don the effort and retire from the contest disappointed and discomforted.
The doctors urge 'resolution'. They de- nounce lack of brisk walking, again among ladies: 'dawdling about in the street and looking in shop windows does very little good' and they sternly warn of the dangers, Spectator readers please note, of 'literary pursuits'. Many writers, we are told, sel- dom have their bowels relieved oftener than once a week. I suspected as much.
Travelling discourages regularity, so those Spectator writers who are always nipping off to • write about faraway places are especially at risk, particularly if the faraway places are unpleasant. The court the ultimate results of constipation; a pain which sufferers describe as 'the shut- ting of the brain', then apoplexy or melan- choly, certainly 'much local trouble . . itching . . . and other mischief .
The solution is also moral: rise early in the morning. Never go back to sleep.
Get up directly you wake . . . dress — no sitting about in your dressing gown — have your breakfast, take your paper and your pipe if you like and retire for a good . . . quarter of an hour. It may be that you feel your visit will be unproductive, nevertheless go. You may be unsuccessful today and perhaps tomorrow, but in time you will succeed. At all events you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have done your duty. After a few weeks, you will in all probability find that your bowels act with the regularity of clockwork.
Don't be impatient:
Defaecation is an important matter . . . not a thing to be done in a hurry . . . many people rush to the closet and if nature is not prepared to relieve herself at the very instant, they never think of allowing her even a minute's grace, but simply get up and come away again; and the consequence is that they suffer from constipation and all its attendant evils — and serve them right too.
The good doctors are against the use of purgatives but strongly recommend various natural helps: bacon, either fried and eaten hot or boiled and eaten cold at breakfast, and coffee. Beer and cider, though, are the drinks they find best suited to those of constipated habits.
And they enthusiastically cite an emi- nent French physician who prescribes smoking: 'Although,. at least in this coun- try, it is not considered very proper for women to smoke, I almost weekly advise ladies to try the effect of smoking a tobacco cigarette, to aid in overcoming constipa- tion.'
There is little a mere cookery columnist can add to such expert medical opinion but there is one idea that Imperative cooks might adopt if confronted with constipated house-guests. It relies on the doctor's insight that constipation is a moral problem and the fact that shame is the spur to morality.
While hosts would not be so paternalistic as to continue the prep school custom of posting lists of guests' names outside the lavatory for them to complete 'S' or 'NS' as the case may be, it would be but proper hospitable concern for their guests' own welfare to ask them for reports orally at dinner.
Digby Anderson
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