A Statement Of Purpose

1. A Statement Of Purpose

In the foreward to a popular book on cooking we find these words: “Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and learn about cooking, the more sense it makes.” It is the purpose of this lesson to show you that cooking makes no sense whatsoever in any lifestyle designed either to build health or to maintain it. In fact, to a hygienist, cooking is the way of the devil rather than the way of an intelligent person, one knowledgeable about the capacilities and limitations of the human body and of what is entailed in the proper preparation of food so that it will be capable of maintaining a high level of health throughout an extended life span.

By far the most important cause of ill health in man is his many and habitual dietetic errors of one kind or another, the immediate results of which are not felt and intelligently evaluated. We can abuse our digestive organs for years and feel no pain. We can create problems for our kidneys by overconsumption of protein for years and feel no pain. However, the time comes when these organs rebel and we become intelligently aware of a diseased condition which is manifested either in the damaged organ itself or in some other place remote from it which has been made diseased through malnutrition or by the presence of irritating toxic metabolic wastes accumulated beyond the body’s overworked eliminative powers.

It is the gradual erosion of health by the more or less constant bombardment by erroneous eating practices which, in most cases, is responsible for the destruction of health. At the present time, after hundreds of generations of experiences with a diet of cooked breads, cooked meats and fats, in actual defiance of the body’s inability to process or use them, we see refined white sugars and syrups used to sweeten just about all canned, frozen and cooked vegetables and fruits; in these “modern” times, we have badly prepared meals cooked to perfection but lacking all properties essential to life; we are confronted on all sides with malnutrition and disease as evidenced by the fact that over 99 percent of the populace has dental caries, 70 to 80 percent are overweight; spines curve and vitality weakens; more and more people wear eye glasses due to impaired vision; at least 70 percent of the people are constipated, and we witness a rising and alarming incidence of cancer and other horrendous degenerative diseases. We find ourselves fighting an almost hopeless war on misery and disease which we ourselves have created.

Here in Tucson we have recently been placed on notice that hospital “care” of the sick is expected to rise another twenty percent during the coming year. This is an age of despair and of fear, particularly among the elderly who are faced with a future which they believe they cannot control. We are convinced that this country could witness a metamorphosis in the health of its people if we could all adopt a manner of living and eating which is sane and biologically sound; if we could convince everyone to adopt a non-stimulating uncooked diet, one which contains the necessary life elements in the right quantity and in the correct proportions and in the highest degree of organization, these attributes being found only in nature’s food packages, ready for our appropriation when eaten just as provided for our use, uncooked. Otto Carque tells us that we should always be guided in the selection and preparation of our foods by the fact that we cannot improve on nature, and that all foods which we enjoy in their natural state are the foods which are best adapted for maintaining health. We feel that what is most needed is self-control and knowledge of how to live according to biological need. The purpose of this lesson then is to enlarge our understanding of the benefits to be accrued by the consumption of uncooked food and to understand why health can be, so manifestly improved and in a relatively short time on an all-raw diet.