Low Sodium Recipes are food that have low sodium content
What You May Not Know about Fruit Recipes
While there is life—and fruit—there is hope. When this truth is realised by the laity nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand professors of the healing art will be obliged to abandon their profession and take to fruit-growing for a living.
Many people have heard vaguely of the "grape cure" for diseases arising from over-feeding, and the lemon cure for rheumatism, but for the most part these "cures" remain mere names. Nevertheless it is almost incredible to the uninitiated what may be accomplished by the abandonment for a time of every kind of food in favour of fruit. Of course, such a proceeding should not be entered upon in a careless or random fashion. Too sudden changes of habit are apt to be attended with disturbances that discourage the patient, and cause him to lose patience and abandon the treatment without giving it a fair trial. In countries where the "grape cure" is practised the patient starts by taking one pound of grapes each day, which quantity is gradually increased until he can consume six pounds. As the quantity of grapes is increased that of the ordinary food is decreased, until at last the patient lives on nothing but grape. I have not visited a "grape cure" centre in person, but I have read that it is not only persons suffering from the effects of over-feeding who find salvation in the "grape cure," but that consumptive patients thrive and even put on weight under it.
The Herald of Health stated, some few years back, that in the South of France where the "grape cure" is practised consumptive patients are fed on grapes alone, and become quite strong and well in a year or two. And I have myself known wonderful cures to follow on the adoption of a fruitarian dietary in cases of cancer, tumour, gout, eczema, all kinds of inflammatory complaints, and wounds that refused to heal.
H. Benjafield, M.B., writing in the Herald of Health, says: "Garrod, the great London authority on gout, advises his patients to take oranges, lemons, strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, etc. Tardieu, the great French authority, maintains that the salts of potash found so plentifully in fruits are the chief agents in purifying the blood from these rheumatic and gouty poisons.... Dr. Buzzard advises the scorbutic to take fruit morning, noon, and night. Fresh lemon juice in the form of lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhœa should be no reason for withholding it." The writer goes on to show that headache, indigestion, constipation, and all other complaints that result from the sluggish action of bowels and liver can never be cured by the use of artificial fruit salts and drugs.
Salts and acids as found in organised forms are quite different in their effects to the products of the laboratory, notwithstanding that the chemical composition may be shown to be the same. The chemist may be able to manufacture a "fruit juice," but he cannot, as yet, manufacture the actual fruit. The mysterious life force always evades him. Fruit is a vital food, it supplies the body with something over and above the mere elements that the chemist succeeds in isolating by analysis. The vegetable kingdom possesses the power of directly utilising minerals, and it is only in this "live" form that they are fit for the consumption of man. In the consumption of sodium chloride (common table salt), baking powders, and the whole army of mineral drugs and essences, we violate that decree of Nature which ordains that the animal kingdom shall feed upon the vegetable and the vegetable upon the mineral.
How does Water Contaminate?
There are numerous ways in which water may become polluted, either at the source or during storage or finally during distribution. Rain water, falling pure from the clouds, encounters dust, soot, decaying leaves and other vegetable matters, and ordure of birds on the roofs; its quality is also affected by the roofing material, or else it is contaminated in the cisterns by leakage from drains or cesspools. Upland waters contain generally vegetable matter, while surface water from cultivated lands becomes polluted by animal manure. River water becomes befouled by the discharge into it of the sewers from settlements and towns located on its banks. Subsoil water is liable to infiltration of solid and liquid wastes emanating from the human system, from leaky drains, sewers, or cesspools, stables, or farmyards; and even deep well water may become contaminated by reason of defects in the construction of the well.
During storage, water becomes contaminated in open reservoirs by atmospheric impurities; a growth of vegetable organisms or algæ often causes trouble, bad taste, or odor; water in open house tanks and in cisterns is also liable to pollution. During distribution, water may become changed in quality, owing to the action of the water on the material of the pipes.
From what source shall good water be obtained? This is the problem which confronts many of those who decide to build in the country.
The usual sources, in their relative order of purity, are: deep springs and land or surface springs, located either above or below the house, but not too near to settlements; deep subterranean water, made available by boring or drilling a well; upland or mountain brooks from uninhabited regions; underground water in places not populated, reached by a dug or driven well; lake water; rain water; surface water from cultivated fields; pond and river water; and finally, least desirable of all, shallow well water in villages or towns. These various sources of supply will be considered farther on.
One of the most remarkable habits of these times is the extensive use of common salt or sodium chloride. It is in all ordinary shop bread, in large quantity in a special and much advertised cereal food, even in a largely sold wheat flour, and often in pastry. It is added to nearly all savoury vegetable food, and many persons, not content, add still more at the time of eating.
No dinner table is considered complete without one or more salt-cellars. Some take even threequarters of an ounce, or an ounce per day. The question is not, of course, whether salt is necessary or not, but whether there is a sufficient quantity already existing in our foods. Some allege that there is an essential difference between added salt and that natural to raw foods. That the former is inorganic, non-assimilable and even poisonous; whilst the latter is organised or in organic combination and nutritive.
Certain tribes of negroes who cannot obtain salt, add to their vegetable food wood ashes or a preparation of wood ashes; this is chiefly potash. One preparation used in British Central Africa was found to contain about 21 per cent. of potassium chloride to only 0.5 per cent. of sodium chloride. It has been said that vegetarians consume more salt than those who take flesh food.
An excess of salt creates thirst and means more work for the kidneys in separating it from the blood prior to its expulsion. Even should it be admitted, that certain vegetables contain too little sodium salts, a very little salt added to such food would be sufficient; there is no excuse for the general use of it, and in such a great variety of foods. It is thought that some cases of inflammation of the kidneys originate in excessive salt eating; certain it is that patients suffering from the disease very soon improve, on being placed on a dietary free from added salt and also poor in naturally contained sodium and potassium salts. It is also possible to cause the swelling of the legs (oedema), to which such invalids are subject, to disappear and reappear at will, by withdrawing and afterwards resuming salt-containing foods. The quantity of one-third of an ounce, added to the usual diet, has after a continuation of several days, produced oedema. In one patient, on a diet of nearly two pounds of potatoes, with flesh, but without added salt, the oedema disappeared and the albumin in the urine diminished. As potatoes are particularly rich in potash salts, this case is significant, as showing contrary to expectations, that such quantity as they contained had not the irritating effect of added common salt. Salt and other chlorides have been shown by several observers, to be injurious, not only in diseases of the kidneys, but also of the liver and heart. In these diseases the excess of salt is retained in the tissues, it causes a flow of fluid into them, and so produces oedema and favours the increase of dropsy.
