Excerpt from Report on the Preparation of Food

After saying this much of the comparative modes Of baking, and of the ameliorations which have been introduced into this important indus try, I am compelled to state that in the Opinion of the medical world this very fine flour and fine bread are not favorable to digestion and assimilation; in other words, that although there is an evident progress in a mechanical point of View, there is none or worse than none in a hygienic point of View; and that if we look at the question in this more practical light, our enthusiasm for the inventors must be singularly moderated. We see in effect that birds swallow whole grains of corn, and then follow them with pebble stones to grind them; and digestion is too similar a process in all bodies to be ever exactly Opposite. Every one in effect knows the benefit derived in cases of weak digestion from whole mustard seeds and from bread made from unbolted flour. The infinitesimal division of the flour and its perfect bolting, which consti tute the secret of excellence in the Austrian flours, create acidity of stom ach and tend to indigestion. The improvement, therefore, which I have noted is, as mentioned in the first part of this report, gustatory rather than hygienic, and must be passed rather to the account of art and lux ury than to that of utility.

In France dyspepsia is extremely rare; In America every second man is more or less dyspeptic. The causes of this frequency are: miasmatic influences, (which derange the liver, ) bad cooking, hasty eating, hot bread, the abuse of liquors, and the excessive use of liquids. In France there is no miasmatic influence to derange the liver, the cooking in gen eral is good, no one eats hastily, hot bread is regarded as a poison, no one abuses strong liquors, and but little water is ever drunk. TO these happy aids to digestion in France ought to be added the benign influ ence of the common table wine of the country, the wine which contains not more than from 8 to 12 per centum of alcohol. This kind of wine is certainly strongly tonic, and, according to the Opinion of Frenchmen, its regular and regulated use renders men more vigorous, more intelligent, more sociable, and more sober. The curse Of drunkenness is only observed in the geographical zones and the social strata where wine is only drunk by exception. The man who is able to find On his table every day at dinner and supper half a bottle of red wine has no need of going to the tavern or the drinking saloon. But these remarks apply only to the red wines of France, to the wines of daily use, the wine which sustains while quenching thirst, the wine which is, in fine, the real comrade of bread. The wines of Spain and Portugal intoxicate and brutalize, but neither quench the thirst nor satisfy any reasonable desire of the body; the wines of western Germany create acidity and thirst, and are, therefore, in no sense hygienic. It is only the red wine of France which is both moral and logical, and fit for the daily use of every man.

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