The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1891-01-08
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
PAMPERED APPETlTEs.

The Danger That Lies In Fanciful Cook
cry. Is
Spices and condiments in the season
ing OF food also lead to intemperance in
the cultivation of an abnormal taste for
hot, smarting substances. They create
craving for more food than can be
digested, and for liquors as well. Per-
sons who do not know how to cook, seek
to make their cookery palatable by
using spices and condiments to hide de-
fects. Good cookery consists in increas-
ing the digestibility and improving the
palatableness of food. Bad cookery
ignores the natural favors Of foods and
adds variety of high seasonings which
render it still more indigestible than the
unskilled preparations would be with
out them. The more serious reason
why high seasonings should lead to in
temperance is in the perversion of the
sense of taste. Certain senses are given
to us to add to our pleasure as we'll as
for the practical use they are to us. For
instance, the sense of sight is not only
useful but enables us to drink in beauty
without doing us any harm. The same
OF music and other harmonies which
may come to us through the sense of
hearing. But the sense of taste was
given to distinguish between wholesome
and unwholesome foods, and can not be
used for merely sensuous qualification
without debasement and making it a
gross thing. An education which de-
mands enjoyment or pleasure through
<Nf 70 TO Sc xxy1,o III -. l.
is coming down to the animal plane or
below it, for the instinct of the brute
creation teaches it merely to eat to live.
How widespread is this habit of sens
uous qualification through taste. We
call upon a neighbor and are offered re-
freshments, as though the greatest bless
ings of life came from indulging the ap-
petite. This evil is largely due to wrong
education which begins in childhood.
When Johnnie sits down to the table
the mother says: Johnnie, what would
you il1e?" instead of putting plain,
wholesome food before him, expecting
him to cat it and be satisfied It sets the
child to thinking that he must have
what he likes whether it is good for him
or not. 1t is not strange that an appe-
tite pampered in this way in childhood
becomes uncomfortable at maturity,
and the step from gormandizing to in
toxicants is much shorter than most
people imagine. The natural, unper-
verified taste of child will lead him to
eat that which is good for him. But
how can we expect the children to re-
form when the parents continually set
them such bad examples in the matter
of eating and drinking?
The cultivation of a taste for spices
is degradation of the sense of taste.
Nature never designed that pleasure
should be divorced from use. The
effects of gratifying the sense of taste
differ materially: from those of crafty
ing the higher senses like sight and
hearing. What we see is gone, and the
same is true of the sweetest sounds
which may reach us through the ear.
But what we taste is swallowed into the
stomach, and what has thus given us
brief pleasure through the qualification
of the palate must make work in the
alimentary canal for fourteen hours be-
fore it is finally disposed of.-Woman's
News.