The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-12-17
DIETARY.


The question, what we shall eat or
what we shall drink to be saved, becomes
more and more serious every day. The
time was when person, after saying
grace, might partake with impunity of
almost anything that the thrifty house
wife placed appetizingly upon the table.
But, alas! those peaceful days are over.
Dangers lurk in every MESS Of pottage,
and poisons invade each tantalizing It'd
bit that comes from the cooks hands.
We never know when we come home
to dinner, or supper, or breakfast,
but that our afflicted family may,
before it is digested, have to send in
turn for the undertaken and the writer
of obituary poetry. We look in the
newspaper as we stimulate our brains
mildly with a cup of Bobea and are
Mortified to discover that the heather
wretches who grow this herb paint it
with poisonous verdigris to make it
beautiful to the eye of the foreign bar
barian. We take to coffee that is i'm
pervious to the Establishments of
green paint and are advised
by the reporter of the investi-
eating newspaper that the pure juice
of the Mocha is distilled from ground
peas and chiccory, and the medical ex-
pert who sells us health at So visit de-
clares that we are bopelessly demoraliz-
ing our livers by the infusion. We flee
to lager, and learn next day that glucose
and cocculus-indicus are mingled with
the amber fluid whose snowy foam is
the emblem of the whited sepulcher that
is lurking in the SCHOONER" beneath.
We turn for final refuge and peace to the
milk-jug, but the health inspector ar
rests our reliable purveyor of
the lacteal fluid next day
for selling the product of diseased and
swill-fed cattle, and eking out the guam
tity with chalk and water tinted with
deceptive yellow pigments. Our faith in
human nature is shaken for the sugar
we sweeten our lives with is mingled
with glucose made of starch and sui
phuric acid. The confectioneries we
give our sweet-hearts in the intervals be-
tween the seasons of ice-cream and the
church festivals is adulterated with terra
alba and other deleterious ingredients
The brandy we put in our mince-pies
is made of alcohol and the essence
of brandy; the port wine we fla
vor the pudding-sauce with car
no more understand Portuguese
than a decoction of logwood and
Peoria whisky. Our mustard is com
posed in large part of corn meal, and oul
rye -four of wheat screenings. Oul
butter is oleomargarne that, if innocent
of the churn, at least has never had the
cows foot in the bucket on its way to the
dairy. Our lard is triturated with water
and some times suspected of being ex
tracted from the flesh of swine that die
of sufocation or from the cholera. Oul
bread is whitened with alum
and our baking powder is gener
ally innocent of cream tartar Th'
f mily doctor forbids us pie, the nurs'
abhors cake, the dyspeptic rolls up hi
eyes in horror at hot biscuits, the youn;
ladies expect beaux after dinner to spent
the evening and decline the onions, be
cause they open the pores, the spinste
can not endure the pickles that she aver
are made of chemical vinegar, while tn
young student has been told by his colleg
professor that the deleterious salts he'll
{ suspended or in solution in the waite
from wells and springs that is made use 0
by the mass of mankind produces twelv
per cent. of the rheumatism, fourteen pc
cent. of the gravel, eight and two-tenth
per cent. Of the epilepsy, nine per cent
of the insanity, three per cent of the cell
r bacy, six ofthe divorces and twenty-nin
of the elopements that occur annual
among mankind. At the rate, therefore
that scientific inquiry is advancing tn
human race might turn its attention t
cheapening funerals or going back to frs
principles and taking their food raw an
: direct from the fanks of the animal t
: avoid being poisoned in the ragout or tn
, condiments