The Health Cookery Book

Phiroz Mehta wrote four chapters of The Health Cookery Book, probably in the early years after the Second World War. He seemed to have intended it for publication, but it does not appear ever to have been printed

Continued from part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4

Here are a few peculiarly compatible combinations of food. It is well to have them with moderate regularity, either as breakfasts or as lunches, for they have a powerful influence in keeping you fit.

• Porridge (made with course oats, and not the cooked-in-five-minutes variety), with a little cold milk and no sugar, eaten with bread and butter.
• A large apple or two.
• A cup of cocoa made with unsweetened milk.

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• One or two oranges, or stewed prunes or figs
• One or two eggs (soft boiled or poached only) with bread and butter.
• A cup of cocoa.

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• Ripe raw apples.
• A large cup of cold milk (or slightly warmed in very cold weather) sipped slowly.

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• A liberal helping of lightly cooked tomatoes with bread (in this case toasted if you like), and a little butter.
• A small handful of mixed nuts (especially brazils and almonds) with raisins, to be chewed very thoroughly before swallowing.
• A small cup of cocoa if desired.

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• A large tablespoon of grated raw carrot (or turnip) and sliced tomatoes, with bread and butter.
• A large baked apple with a little cream and honey — or instead of apple take stewed prunes.

We will now give you examples of mistakes which you will see very often:

• Porridge with milk and white sugar, and cream sometimes.
• Bacon and eggs.
• White bread or white toast and butter, and marmalade or jam.
• Coffee.

Here all the food is acid producing, with nothing alkaline to neutralize it.

• Fish.
• Mince, and poached egg on white toast.
• White bread and butter and marmalade.
• Tea.

Here there is an excess of proteins. Result: acidity and disease.

• Soup (of meat stock, or beans or lentils).
• Fish, and/or meat, with roast or chip potatoes and boiled greens (with the water thrown down the drain!).
• Apple tart, or strawberries and cream.
• Coffee.

Again, a very bad mixture. Also, being typical of an average lunch or dinner, it exemplifies the difference between a simple meal and a complicated one.

The worst types of meals are:

• Hors d’oeuvres.
• Soup.
• Fish, and meat, and two vegetables.
• Sweet.
• Cheese and biscuits.
• Fried nuts.
• Coffee and chocolate and candies.

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• In India (amongst those who can — or have to — afford it), one or two sherries, or vermouths, or cocktails, etc. Then you walk into the dining room with your first whisky and soda in hand. Then:
• Hors d’oeuvres.
• Soup.
• Fish, or meat, and vegetables.
• Chicken and vegetables.
• Rich pulse (a rice dish) and curry (chicken or meat).
• Some special Indian dish, probably.
• English sweet dish.
• Indian sweets or sweet dish.
• Ice cream possibly.
• Fried nuts, chocolates, other sweets.
• Coffee.
• At least three or four whiskies and sodas in between.
• Begin dinner around 9:00–9:30 pm and end around 11:00–11:30 pm. After which regime for several years — admittedly not perpetuated every day, but far too often each month — our retired civil servants talk about health sacrificed in service…

The necessity for beauty

Beauty has a healthful energizing influence. Always spread your table with an eye to beauty. A clean tablecloth and serviettes, clean crockery and cutlery and plate, clean hands and faces and clothes both of the servers and diners, and a few flowers (sweet scented fresh flowers from the garden, not glass or paper ones from the shop), are essentials for a cheerful happy meal. Each person should contribute his or her share to the atmosphere of love and beauty and enjoyment at table. Make an art of eating. Be gracious and cheerful, considerate and kindly towards others as well as towards oneself. Leave all business concerns, all “matters of importance” on the office table, or, if necessary, in the waste paper basket. For at table one is concerned with one of the greatest necessities for continuing one’s existence.

Primarily important is it that husband and wife shall never quarrel at table; that neither of them (especially the husband who is the usual offender here) shall be adversely critical of what the wife has taken pains to prepare herself or to have supervised in preparation; and that the children shall never witness discord between the parents, possibly even violence and tears. Enjoying a meal is probably the keenest enjoyment a child can experience. On no account should it be poisoned by unthinking and absurdly behaved parents. Laughter and jokes, an equal opportunity for all present to talk and be listened to attentively, a sense of sharing proportionately whatever food and drink there is without grumbling or undue apologising to the guests should something run short or not be a “success”,

are all part and parcel of the meal and constitute the art of eating.

Let all the dishes be deliciously prepared and daintily served. Deliciousness does not mean using spices, condiments, sauces, extracts, or any of the multitudinous “so-good-for-you’s”, indiscriminately. Prepare all the food simply ad naturally so that its wholesomeness and its own distinctive flavours are not lost.

Do not have a blaring band ravaging peace and harmony at meal times. Good music, yes — something pleasant and tuneful.

Poverty has very little to do, if anything at all, with the question of beauty. If there is no garden, and no money to buy flowers, a few leaves artlessly placed on the table will invite the spirit of beauty. No money is necessary to pluck a few leaves off that tree! Nor has money anything to do with clean hands and faces at least, if not clean clothes also! Nor does the lack of money prevent the washing of utensils, plate, and cutlery.

Love beauty and do all that is possible to associate it with the meal. It is regrettable that in our modern “hurry and bustle” life the beautiful custom of saying grace before and after meals is disappearing almost everywhere. The custom has been prevalent at some period or other in all nations all over the world. Where the custom still prevails however, the manner of saying grace has degenerated. The reason is that the significance underlying saying grace is no longer understood. Saying grace was a expression of man’s understanding of the living relationship between himself and his food (which is a part of the “body” of mother Nature). Man owes a duty to food. Not only must he till the soil, and tend the plant, but when mother earth gives freely and unmurmurigly of her produce unto him, it is only courteous and healthful to be graciously mindful of Life’s bounty to him.

Lay your table artistically, and make your dishes look and smell as attractive as possible. This will stimulate a better flow of the digestive juices — all the better for the enjoyment of your meal. Consider a salad for example: A nest of lettuce leaves with alternate groups of water cress, grated carrot, and grated beetroot, an inner ring of cucumber slices or celery hearts, and a centre of grated turnip or parsnip or a mound of red radishes, with a ring of luscious ripe tomatoes to fringe the whole dish — how do you like the picture?

A note on expensive meals

The best meals are the inexpensive meals. Paying five times or twenty five times the normal price merely to buy young green peas or new potatoes a few weeks before they are in season is not only stupid snobbery but is harmful to health, because the extremely young plant has not had time to extract sufficient mineral salts from the soil or fully develop its vitamin content.

Forget the pernicious habit of peeling — usually the peelings are about 10–13% of the total amount of food — all the skins from potatoes, apples, etc. If you do not peel skins or extravagantly scrub off surface layers wherever possible, you will have enough extra food available for one other person in every nine or ten. Also consider the saving effected by cutting down, or preferably cutting out, salt, pepper, sugar, and a multitude of useless and even harmful little knick-knacks. How much easier, healthier, and tastier to use a little mint and parsley picked from the garden, or nasturtium leaves or sage or thyme, all of which are beneficial to health. Raw salads effect a saving of money on fuel, and of time for preparation.

The technique of eating

A few more simple hints, the most important of which concerns the balance of the quantity at meals.

Take either a light breakfast, moderate lunch and moderate dinner, or a moderate breakfast, light lunch and moderate dinner, or a moderate breakfast, moderate lunch and light dinner.

A heavy meal at any time is harmful — but do not forget to break even this rule at Christmas!

Never eat to repletion. When you leave the table you should feel you could still eat another light course without discomfort — in other words, satisfy about two thirds or three quarters of your hunger at the actual meal. Learn to distinguish false hunger from true hunger. Wrong feeding produces false craving and deprives you of your sense of judging whether you are really hungry, and how much. For example, eating only cooked food always leads you on to overeat; so does an excess of starches (especially white flour products, polished rice, and other foods similar to them); so do sloppy foods, which you tend to swallow at once, depriving them of being mixed with the saliva which is absolutely essential for their proper digestion; and so does an excess of proteins (meat, fish, etc.). Wrong feeding produces an itch for stimulating drinks which in their turn produce a false appetite. Thus the vicious circle goes on, and if you are not sensible in time, you pay the price in money, disease, misery, and death. What a gloomy horror!

No one in the world has ever hurt himself by a little judicious fasting. On the contrary he has always benefited himself. Fasting is a voluntary cessation from taking food (but not from drinking as much fresh cool water as you like), or giving the internal organs a holiday — don’t you need one yourself regularly? — resulting in improved health. Starvation is the harmful forcible deprivation of food necessary for existence, leading to debility, and finally death.

Carefully note the difference between fasting and starvation. Chew every morsel, especially nuts, very thoroughly before swallowing. But do not go to the extreme of reducing everything (except nuts, or else you may suffer from biliousness) to a liquid condition; for it you do, you may suffer from atrophy of the bowel. Do not chew with short sharp jabs of your jaws, like so many young boys do, for that will wear all the enamel off your teeth, and sooner or later ruin them; but chew with a gentle firm action — somewhat like the cows do! — and you will enjoy your food better, and save your teeth and digestion.

Eat slowly — your speed can never break the record of the London-Edinburgh express.

Don’t argue that you are so busy that you have no time to observe these counsels of perfection. If you are so busy, either:

• Omit the meal.
• Be ill, because you must gobble your food since you are busy.
• Realize you are not a good organiser of your time and therefore not really a thorough business man.
• Take the hints offered here!

Do not read newspapers, or an exciting or heavy book at meals. If you have no companionship at meals and only the blank wall of the restaurant to stare at, then read something pleasant or humorous.

Discuss food and food-values and physiological chemistry and all the rest of it at any time except meal times. Avoid all argumentative or strenuous conversation at meals.

Forget your anxieties and worries when you eat.

Sit comfortably and erect, but not stiffly, in your chair, and lean back and breathe easily as you chew. This hint ought to be observed as a definite rule if you want the best out of your meal. If you do not, crouch over it with your neck stiff, shoulders hunched, chest cramped, and stomach and intestines compressed.

Allow at least 20 minutes of peace and quiet before, and 30 minutes after each meal.

Continued in part 6

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