Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them - Soil and Health Library

THE FUNCTION OF FOODS.
THE true function of food is to supply material for growth,
and for new tissue, to replace that worn out by effort. Things
which do not serve these two purposes cannot be consistently
classed as foods. On the contrary, they are exactly the
opposite; for when they are taken into the body, they must be
excreted at the expense of energy. These facts should be
observed in the preparation of all materials used as food.
What we call life is but the ever-changing expression of
organic matter. Just how it is created, how from the
protoplasm or the tiniest molecule there comes the wellorganized
being—what strange change takes place when two
atoms called germs are blended, to create a living thing, what
' gives it form, color and intelligence—all these things are as
deeply buried in the realm of the unknown as they were a
million years ago.
All we know is that all life must comply with certain
natural laws in order to be free—for a man in the throes of
disease is not free. He is a vassal, a slave. He is in bondage.
He has himself fastened fetters on his flesh by his own
foolishness—by disobeying nature's laws.
Obedience to these laws will keep life in the line of
evolution to higher and higher degrees of perfection till it
reaches that zenith to which nature is ever striving to bring all
she creates.
But if these laws are violated the process of evolution is
interfered with, and the penalty is expressed by disease and
death.
In the support and maintenance of life the first and most
important thing is the substance upon which it feeds. Animals
in their native state seem to put the proper appreciation upon
foods. They instinctively reject that which is harmful—that
which would interfere with nature's process of evolution—
and accept as food that which is good for them. Man does not
act with such wisdom. Civilization has created for him
artificial environments in the chaos of which his instincts
have been lost.
The most important thing that can possibly engage the
thoughts of mankind is how to build the human body, how to
bring to their highest development all its faculties. This must
depend upon something, must be made of something. That
something is food.
It looks incredible indeed that the wisest, wealthiest and
most philanthropic men the world has ever produced would
spend great fortunes and many of the best years of their lives
in erecting and perfecting such things as astronomical
observatories, in creating instruments and delicate scales
upon which the worlds are weighed and distances measured
to the remotest planets, knowing full well that when all this
magnificent array of knowledge was gained that it would be
of no possible benefit to mankind except the mere satisfaction
of knowing that it was known. It seems incredible that they