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

VEGETABLES.
THE word "vegetable," in its broadest sense, is used to
describe everything of an herbaceous character,—everything
in plant life, not merely food products. When we consider
only that portion which is used to support animal life, its
meaning becomes much narrowed. When we consider that
portion used as food by man, it is more narrowed still. But
when we come to consider that which is or can be used in an
uncooked state, it becomes more limited still.
Some very high authorities claim that vegetables are
wholly unnecessary in the sustenance of the human body, but
experience has led us to the conclusion that those containing
much chlorophyll, such as lettuce, cabbage, celery, spinach,
parsley, onions, watercress, dandelion, etc., are very
necessary and valuable articles of food, and, many vegetables
that can be taken in an uncooked form are found to be very
rich in the organic salts so essential to the maintenance of
health.
In the selection of foods, one of the safest rules to be
governed by is that all articles that can be used in their natural
condition, as they are handed to us by Mother Nature, if they
do not offend the sense of taste and smell, are good food, and,
on the contrary, all articles that have to be ground, mixed,
fixed, cooked, greased, mushed and mussed up, are not only
unnecessary, but are not good foods.
Aside from the fact that the adoption of uncooked foods
will produce the highest form of physical, mental and moral
health, its next most important office is to do away with the
enormous labor and complications in the preparation of
foods.