Buttermilk

Buttermilk is an excellent food for those with whom it agrees.  In many instances a straight buttermilk diet for a certain period will prove very beneficial.  This is especially true in all forms of uric acid diseases.

Sour milk or clabber also has excellent medicinal qualities and may be taken freely by those with whom it agrees.

Drinks

It has been stated before that coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages should be avoided.

Instead of the customary coffee, tea or cocoa, delicious drinks, which are nutritious and at the same time nonstimulating, may be prepared from the different fruit and vegetable juices.  They may be served cold in hot weather and warm in winter.  Recipes for fruit and vegetable drinks will be included in our new Vegetarian Cookbook, now in preparation.

If more substantial drinks are desired, white of egg may be added or the entire egg may be used in combination with prune juice, fig juice or any of the acid fruit juices.  Other desirable and unobjectionable additions to beverages are flaked nuts or bananas mashed to a liquid.

The juice of a lemon or an orange, unsweetened, diluted with twice the amount of water, taken upon rising, is one of the best means of purifying the blood and other fluids of the body and, incidentally, clearing the complexion.  The water in which prunes or figs have been cooked should be taken freely to remedy constipation.

As a practical illustration, I shall describe briefly the daily dietary regimen as it is followed in our sanitarium work.

Breakfast consists of juicy fruits, raw, baked or stewed, a cereal (whole wheat steamed, cracked wheat, shredded wheat, corn flakes, oat meal, etc.), and our health bread with butter, cottage cheese or honey.  Nuts of various kinds, as well as figs, dates, or raisins, are always on the table.  To those of our patients who desire a drink, we serve milk, buttermilk or cereal coffee.

Twice a week we serve eggs, preferably raw, soft boiled or poached.

Luncheon is served at noontime and is composed altogether of acid and subacid fruits, vegetable salads or both.  We have found by experience that, by having one meal consist entirely of fruits and vegetables, the medicinal properties of these foods have a chance to act on the system without interference by starchy and protein food elements.

Dinner is served to our patients between five and six.  The items of the daily menu comprise relishes, such as radishes, celery, olives, young onions, raw carrots, etc., soup, one or two cooked vegetables, potatoes, preferably boiled or baked in their skins, and a dessert consisting of either a fruit combination or a pudding.

We serve soup three times a week only, because we believe that a large amount of fluid of any kind taken into the system at meal time dilutes and thereby weakens the digestive juices.  For this reason it is well to masticate with the soup some bread or crackers or some vegetable relish.