Untitled article by A. S. HUTCHINS

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 12, 1867

WHAT SHALL I GET TO EAT?

By A. S. HUTCHINS

How many times the anxious cook has asked herself this question; especially when about to prepare a meal for fashionable company. And in the majority of cases, no doubt, the question has been raised more with reference to what would suit the palate, than what would be nutritious, healthful, and life-preserving. With many, these are items of minor importance, while taste and appetite hold the highest point, and turn the scale in settling the question, What shall we eat?

Now if the great object of eating and drinking was to gratify the taste, and nature had no other demands to be satisfied therefrom, then might we say in the same thoughtless, heedless manner that thousands do, “Let us have something good to eat.” Yea, we might adopt the Epicurean creed, “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.”

But health reformers have a higher motive before them. They eat to preserve life; to give strength, mentally and physically. They eat to glorify God. If the Health Reform finds them blessed with health and strength, they should eat and drink with reference to the preservation of these. If they are invalids, they are to have their food prepared with reference to the recovery of these. Otherwise they are unworthy of the name of health reformers.

With these facts bearing upon the mind, I have desired for months to say a word to our friends relative to my diet when I come among you, that you may be relieved from all anxiety in regard to what I can eat with safety and real satisfaction, though I may have just come from the Health Institute.

And first I would say that such is the state of my digestive organs, that I cannot eat rich food. Rich pies and cakes, and highly-seasoned food, or bread prepared from fine flour I cannot eat without serious injury to myself. Restless nights, with suffering and debility of mind and body are the result if I do. Please, then, excuse me from these things.

But you ask, “What do you eat?” Answer. The principal articles of diet with me are, graham puddings, made of unbolted wheat flour and water, thoroughly cooked, and hard or soft biscuits, made of the same material, and both cooked without salt. These, with wholesome fruit, in its natural state, canned, or in the form of simple sauce, or made into plain pies, are what I most invariably choose, yet sometimes I use vegetables with a good relish, and no ill effects were it not for the seasoning, which in the majority of cases spoils them both for my taste and for the stomach. The salt which frequently finds its way into these dishes is, to me, an active poison; and you would perhaps hardly believe what I have suffered from eating of them when I have been assured that there was but a “very little salt there.” Here is the difference. Your “very little” and my “very little,” do not agree. Probably I should not use one-tenth part of the salt in food where I use it at all, that most families even among health reformers do.

Let us, dear brethren and sisters, hasten to lay aside every unnecessary article of diet, and be in earnest to heed the exhortation of the apostle: “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

A. S. HUTCHINS.