Health Foods and How to Prepare Them

In 1899, Emma Todd Anderson wrote a book about health food for the National Institute of Science. Health Foods and How to Prepare Them has advice that is current for today's reader. No salt or seasoning of any kind, no flesh, to alcohol or tobacco, and plenty of water. She has empirical evidence for her findings and offers numerous examples of how to live to 100.

Judith Bannister, of Cowes, Isle of Wight, died in 1754, aged 108. She lived the last 60 years of her life upon biscuit, milk and apples.

Philip Loutier, died in London at 105. He ate but two meals a day, mostly vegetables, and drank nothing but water.

Elizabeth Macpherson, living in the county of Caithness, Scotland, died 1765, aged 117. Her chief diet for many years was bread, buttermilk and greens.

Anderson advises, “If parents would give their children abundance of fruit AT MEALS, they would not grow up with an appetite for intoxicants.”

If you want upstanding, teetotaling children that will live to be 100+ try this next Thanksgiving.

Vegetable Turkey

One cup of chopped nuts (one or more kinds); 1 cup dry breadcrumbs; 1 cup milk; 1 teaspoonful nut butter dissolved in the milk; mix well together. Add 2 eggs well beaten, teaspoonful pulverized sage; teaspoonful salt. Bake twenty minutes.

The above recipe was used at the large banquet held by the Vegetarian Society at the Great Northern Hotel in 1896, the price being $2.50 a plate.

Frankly, if I have to eat buttermilk and water to live to be 100, I’ll pass. Give me a rib eye and a bottle of wine and I will go gently into that goodnight.