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

ecame so highly developed and universally used. There are
about 7,000 species in the legume family contained in about
450 different genera.
The enormous variety of things that could be used as
food because they would sustain life, which had been
discovered by mankind in his more primitive years, were
passed on from generation to generation and mixed, crossed
and combined to appease the appetite of the wealthier classes.
Besides this extensive bill of fare that had been discovered
and compiled from necessity, the earth's surface was again
scoured to find things that would tickle the palate of the
priests and rulers of the Oriental world.
The natural trend of civilization is to group people
together in communities, settlements and cities. The natural
tendency of this, under ancient, and even our present social
system, was to concentrate wealth, the result of which is
always the division of society into two classes, namely,
producers and non-producers.
This condition left its mark upon the inhabitants of
ancient cities. Idleness sought employment and entertainment
in many forms of dissipation, the most prominent of which
was feasting—eating and drinking. The ancient Romans at
their feasts would eat as long as they could comfortably sit
up, and then lie down, and in this position finish their feast.
Then they would repair to a vomitorium, where they would
disgorge themselves.
The result of this was mental and physical decay among
the wealthier classes. It was at this time that Augustus Caesar
was changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, and
she was boasting that her art, language and literature were
ornamenting and civilizing the world, when in reality among
her wealthier classes was being sown the seeds of her
ultimate decline.
Our present methods of sustaining life from food are but
a mirror made from the fragments of man's past and curious
history, in which the student can see reflected through the
ages that have gone the primitive man and the food and habits
which brought him to such a high degree of physical
perfection.
During the whole life of primitive man he would not eat
more than a half dozen different varieties of food, while it is
estimated that the average American can select from 1,000
articles.
It would be impossible, as well as useless, to try to
enumerate all the articles used as food, and especially to
attempt to give their analyses or nutritive values. All we wish
to show are the reasons why man has become so omnivorous.
We want to make him think. We merely want to give him
material out of which he can weave his own conclusions.
We want no one to accept our theories of the food
question without thorough investigation and study. If he does,
he will eternally be wavering between two opinions, and like
all those who bestride great questions, will never accomplish
anything of value on either side.