THE SCIENCE OF EATING.*
Tens book with its alluring title is not written to guide the steps of the gourmet into fresh and unexplored regions of the culinary art, but rather would it strive to entice him from the bread path, leading through the ever-cultivated fields of the " food " producer to physical destruction, into the straight and narrow path of simple feeding and the avoidance of " pro- cessed " and adulterated foods, a path which, it is unnecessary to tell the reader, leads upwards to the heights of health, bodily and menta.L Perhaps we have failed in our first attempt to suggest the style of the writer of The Science of Eating, but it is difficult for the phlegmatic inhabitant of these isles to adapt himself to the flamboyant way of some American journalists. Mr. McCann was on the staff of the New York Globe and wrote for many other journals, and, unfortunately, when he determined to explain his views in a book, he did not trouble, or deem it necessary, to alter methods no doubt suitable for the daily papers which want startling phrases to catch hurried readers. The references to the supposed will and purpose of the Creator seem sadly out of place in a work devoted to the question of " denatured " and adulterated foods. The heading of a section "God Has Prescribed" annoys, even if it does not offend. And, after all, there appears to be no need for all this gesticulation. The author, who ontheevidence of the book is an expert in the subject with which he here deals, has a plain tale to tell and a message to deliver, both of which, in this country at least, would be received better if the style of their delivery were less exaggerated.
As advertising manager of a food business Mr. McCann had ample opportunity of learning what took place in such estab- lishments and early appreciated the dangers to the health of the community of the consumption of over-refined and in many eases adulterated foods. With the assistance of the Press he started a campaign against these abuses, in the course of which, the preface informs us, he initiated two hundred and six success- ful prosecutions of food adulterators and never lost a case. But it is with over-refinement of food rather than with food adulteration that he is mainly concerned, and we would ask whether the author is justified in holding up to odium food manufacturers for not accepting his views—views which, although proved correct by recent research, did not appear to rest on a sound physiological basis. We are all aware that among the wholesale food-producers there are bad men, who do not scruple to foist useless and even harmful goods on a gullible public, but the proportion of wicked men in this trade is probably not different from that in other trades.
There is, alas ! no gainsaying the statement that in the many processes through which foods are now put before being placed on the market some of the most important constituents required for the maintenance of health and essential for growth are, all unheeded, removed. This happens in the preparation of white
• The
itos. cd. Se.en,g of Ea (mg. lay Mired W. McCann. London Evens Bro..
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flour, whereby all the vitamines and a large proportion of the mineral salts are removed. Not altogether the fault of the
miller, for the public will demand white bread and won't be
happy till it gets it. The public is, after all, not so stupid 115 it seems, for it knows that a dark loaf may get its colour from other
ingredients than wholemeal, so that the loaf may not only be deficient in minerals and vitamines, but may contain pose tively deleterious substances. Probably when the new scientists of the order of Mr. McCann have converted the civilized world to their ways of thinking, they will discover that there are many other factors besides food deficiencies which influence the growth of city children; nevertheless, the effects of diet deficient in what are described as accessory food substances are very widespread, and the public will be well advised to pay attentioa to the author's warnings.
The writer has much to say on the subject of denaturing by refining of many foods in the staple diet of Americana and Europeans, but he concentrates his most powerful batteries against the miller producing white flour. He would have us all discard white flour, which in the process of milling is deprived of its vitatnines and most of its salts and is left with little else but the starch of the grain. Now it matters compesatirely little to the rich with a widely varied diet whether the flour of which they eat no inordinate amount is deprived of the vitalizing elements, but it is obviously of the greatest importance to that large portion of the community for whom bread is literally the staff of life. There can be little doubt that muck of the malmt. trition among the poorer classes, both children and adults, is to be attributed to unsuitable diet, of which bread made with white flour forms a large proportion. This view has been held by many of the older physicians, and was maintained and acted upon by the experts in whose hands we wisely placed control of our food supplies during the war. This is not a discovery of the author, and it remains to be seen whether his raging propaganda work will do more to move the millers and the public to alter their evil ways than the words of some of our most respected scientists. In connexion with this question of white flour, the account of "The Rronprinz Wilhelm' Poison Squad" is certainly most interesting. The German raider Kronprinz Wilhelm' left Hoboken on August 3rd, 1914, and after roaming the seas for 255 days and sinking 14 British and French vessels, was forced to run for Newport News harbour not for fear of the actions of her enemies, but because her crew was stricken with scurvy or some similar deficiency disease. Whenever a vessel was captured the provisions,. of of which there were often large quantities, were, with the excep- tion of a cargo of wholemeal, removed to the raider. The crew had all the fresh meat, white bread, margarine and there vege- tables and fruit they could possibly need—indeed, they had as excess of these foods—and yet scurvy attacked them, fifty could not stand on their feet, and this number was being rapidlyadded to. Red meat and white bread, says Mr. McCann—these and the resulting acidosis or acid condition of the body fluids had brought about this terrible state of affairs. Wholemeal and dried fruits would have saved them. There is, indeed, much truth in this contention, but it seems probable that the crew, who must have spent many hours in enforced idleness, suffered not only fromfood deficiencies, butfrom food excesses ; in other words, they had been doing themselves too well. However this may be, the diet prescribed by the writer soon restored the men to health.
The author shows much cleverness in marshalling his facts, or reputed facts, but it is a pity he did not limit himself to the consideration of food adulteration and impoverishment. Instead he wanders off into discussions concerning the most suitable diet for health, rages against excessive meat-eating, sugar consumption and other things, in the course of which the reader is introduced to such monstrous words as "kidnep cide " and " kidncyviki," and is left wondering whether Illson' factured foods or manufactured words are the more to be dreaded- Moreover, we are not impressed when the writer tells us : " The statements made here are not sweeping statements. They have gone to headquarters for their authority and are fool- proof "—especially when we find him maintaining that in Jap.ac only fourteen grams of protein per person are consumed daily. Professor Chittenden spent many months proving that a men, could subsist and perform his ordinary work on fifty grams °' protein, equivalent to about 3 ozs. of meat, a day, where'', previously it had been supposed that he required one hundred grams. But fourteen grams per person, even making allowance
for the smaller needs of the women and children, does not sound like a fool-proof statement. We are in favour of any campaign likely to ensure the provision of unspoiled food, but this volume is, we think, too sensational and biased to achieve its object.
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