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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
and teaching them how to cook with simplicity and yet with skill,
you are laying the foundation for the most useful branches of educa-
tion. Skill is required to make good light bread. There is religion in
good cooking, and I question the religion of that class who are too
ignorant and too careless to learn to cook.
We see sallow complexions and groaning dyspeptics wherever
we go. When we sit at the tables, and eat the food cooked in the same
manner as it has been for months, and perhaps years, I wonder that
these persons are alive. Bread and biscuit are yellow with saleratus.
This resort to saleratus was to save a little care; in consequence
of forgetfulness, the bread is often allowed to become sour before
baking, and to remedy the evil a large portion of saleratus is added,
which only makes it totally unfit for the human stomach. Saleratus
in any form should not be introduced into the stomach, for the effect
is fearful. It eats the coatings of the stomach, causes inflammation,
and frequently poisons the entire system. Some plead: “I cannot
make good bread or gems unless I use soda, or saleratus.” You surely
can if you become a scholar, and will learn. Is not the health of your
family of sufficient value to inspire you with ambition to learn how
to cook and how to eat?
That which we eat cannot be converted into good blood unless it
is of a proper quality, simple and nutritious. The stomach can never
convert sour bread into sweet. Food poorly prepared is not nutritious
and cannot make good blood. These things which fret and derange
the stomach will have a benumbing influence upon the finer feelings
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of the heart. Many who adopt the health reform complain that it does
not agree with them; but, after sitting at their tables, I come to the
decision that it is not the health reform that is at fault, but the poorly
prepared food. Health reformers, above all others, should be careful
to shun extremes. The body must have sufficient nourishment. We
cannot subsist upon air merely; neither can we retain health unless
we have nourishing food. Food should be prepared in good order so
that it is palatable. Mothers should be practical physiologists, that
they may teach their children to know themselves and to possess
moral courage to carry out correct principles in defiance of the
health-and-life-destroying fashions. To needlessly transgress the
laws of our being is a violation of the law of God.