In complying with the request of Messrs. Fowler & Wells for the manuscript of this sermon for publication, I should fall far short of my duty if I did not allude more particularly than seemed appropriate in a Sabbath sermon, to the valuable work which is being done by the Health Food Company, and to the great excellence of its products. If these remarks were addressed to physicians, the simple mention of the name of the company would suffice, because there are probably very few medical men and women who are not aware of the good work of this organization in the matter of providing perfect foods for invalids of every type, as well as for such as are in health and are solicitous thus to continue. The work of the company has, from the beginning, been under the wise direction of a scientific head, himself an original investigator, and having an ample acquaintance with all the truths which have been evolved by modern scientific research. While it is very important that physicians should know all that is to be known concerning improved forms of diet, in order that their large opportunities for conveying valuable information to the world may not go unused, I deem it of even greater moment that the vast body of intelligent readers and church-goers should be made aware of the fact that in the matter of food and its preparation there are laws which are not comprehended by ignorant cooks, which may not be violated with impunity, the scope and importance of which are being more perfectly understood from year to year, and which, in their practical application by intelligence and skill, are capable of accomplishing a grand work in the up-building and re-building of human bodies and brains. Especially am I desirous that my brethren in the ministry—many of whom, I am persuaded, suffer from unsupplied waste of brain and nerve power—should more fully appreciate the fact that while waste of the grosser tissues of the body may be supplied by common forms of food, such foods may nearly or quite fail to supply or replenish the waste of the delicate brain and nervous system; and should understand how the best foods for the active brain-worker can be procured.

A dyspeptic myself, a member of a dyspeptic family, and observing much of that kind of misery and weakness which arises from digestive feebleness, I have been compelled to study the subject of food in its relation to bodily and mental and moral well-being, during many years; and it is not less a pleasure than a duty to say that an intimate acquaintance with the researches of the Health Food Co. and its products, has convinced me that this organization is the center and source of the best information obtainable in any land, on the subject of dietetics; that the food which it prepares from many substances, especially from the cereal grains, are the best in the world; and that all who seek to live wisely and well, all who are strong and would continue so, all who are feeble and would fain be strong, all in whom the spirit to lead noble and useful lives is willing, but in whom the flesh, alas! is weak—owe it to themselves and to all whom they have power to influence, to learn all that can be learned concerning the great work of this company. In this brief Appendix it is not possible to allude, even remotely, to all its investigations in the domain of dietetics, nor to fully indicate the valuable results which it has achieved. I shall be justified, however, in referring to a few of its more prominent applications of scientific thought to the daily needs of humanity.

It knew that the white commercial flour of wheat, by whatever “new process,” or under whatever brand, was a robbed, impoverished food, and that attached to the bran or husk—which is excluded as it should be—there is a layer of nitrogeneous substance which goes to the cows and horses. It deemed it a pity that human bodies and brains should be deprived of just what it most needed for perfect support—this wheat nitrogen, so rich in the useful minerals without which there is no adequate up-building of every tissue. So it devised a method of removing all the woody, branny, siliceous coats from the grain without wasting one atom of the nutriment. Seeing that ordinary mill-stone grinding tended to heat and impair the flour, it devised other and better methods of pulverizing. To-day, as for years past, their whole wheat flour is not a coarse, harsh, branny mixture, like what is called “Graham,” but a perfect, natural, nourishing bread-food, with nothing taken from it that is useful, and without the obnoxious addition of grit from rapidly revolving millstones, or the woody fibre and silex which form the protecting, innutritious shell. Thus the theories of the value of bread from the entire wheat berry, advanced by Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, in 1825, and subsequently urged by Dr. Sylvester Graham, were taken up by the head of the Health Food Company, sustained in part and exploded in part, while the small residue of truth really existing in the Grahamite philosophy, modified and improved by exact experiments and by scientific methods, has at length been made of real value to the human race instead of continuing to be a source of possible, and often of positive injury, by virtue of the errors originally attending it. The perfect, branless flour of the entire grain is called the Cold Blast Whole Wheat Flour, and is, beyond question, the most perfect bread-food in the world.

Again, chemistry long ago proved that the nitrogenous, albuminous element of the great food staples (the cereal grains) known as Gluten, was the chief source of muscular tissue in animals, whether obtained from grasses, seeds, or other vegetable substances; that it could be digested in a mixture of 1 part gastric juice and 10 parts water; that it could be separated from its universal attendant, starch, by washing; and that a kind of tasteless, insipid bread could then be made from it, which was understood to be useful in a disease called diabetes. Up to a few years ago these facts comprised pretty much all that the scientific world knew about Gluten. It was known to exist; Koopman, the German chemist, had shown it to be readily digestible; and it was non-convertible into sugar, and therefore a safe food for those to whom starch, or the sugar which results from digested starch, is little less than poison. These slender facts were not sufficient to satisfy the accurate investigator at the head of the Health Food Co. He deemed it probable that this easily digested Gluten, this source of all the tissues of the ox except the fatty ones, would be found to be of vast value as a separate food for human beings, if while being practically isolated from the starch and bran associates which nature provides, it could still retain the pleasant grainy flavor of the cereal which supplies it. He began a series of investigations to determine the source of the agreeable flavor existing in sound wheat, and—as modified by milling and cooking—in commercial wheat flour and the foods prepared therefrom. The results of the researches of Prof. Henry B. Hill, of Harvard University, and of those contemporaneously conducted by Adolph Baeyer, of Munich, led him to conclude that to the oil known as “furfurol,” existing in the exterior bran and interior cellulose of the grain, the flour and bread chiefly owed their desirable flavors. The cellulose of the interior of the wheat was found to contain enough of the flavoring oil to impart to the insipid gluten an agreeable taste. Accordingly, methods were devised for separating the gluten and the cellulose from most of the starch, these three elements alone remaining after the bran coats were peeled off.

This “whole wheat gluten,” as it is termed by the company, has proved a most valuable food, not only for the diabetic, to whom it seems to present the chief hope of recovery, but to the dyspeptic and feeble, whether in brain or body. Its use has been attended with such signally successful results as to attract the attention of large numbers of prominent medical men, among whom I may mention Prof. Austin Flint, of Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York city, who passes upon it a warm encomium in his last great volume. [See Flint’s Clinical Medicine, pp. 452-53.]

If I did not feel quite certain that the vast majority of those who shall peruse this paragraph would seek from the Health Food Company, or from some of its many agents in various parts of the country, the very able and interesting pamphlets which it mails free to all applicants, I should deem it my duty to allude to other and not less valuable applications of scientific thought to the vast problems involved in the preparation of foods for humanity, from infancy to old age. To adequately describe them all, would require a volume; let me content myself with an allusion to one or two of the many.

There is a digestive element existing in the saliva and in the fluid called the “pancreatic juice,” which bears the name of “diastase.” This diastase exists nowhere outside of the animal economy, except in seeds during the process of germination, or sprouting. When the seed, or cereal, or vegetable, is exposed to proper influences of moisture and warmth, such, for example, as are supplied by the earth in spring-time, the process of germination begins, and from the germ diastase is liberated. The function of the diastase thus set free is the conversion of the food elements in the seed into assimilative nutriment for the young and tender plant. It is the digestant of food, whether the thing fed be plant or animal. Now, while physiologists have long been ready to concede that when, as is common in diseased conditions, this important digestant is absent from the saliva and pancreatic juice, the conversion of all starchy foods is suspended, it has not been supposed that diastase has any marked influence upon the emulsification and digestion of food-substances not containing starch, nor had any food-chemist availed himself of the diastase in cereals, if I except the development and possible subsequent retention, to some extent, of diastase in some of the preparations of malt. The Health Food Company develops and employs the cereal diastase in a most effective way. It removes the germinal molecules from wheat and barley, reduces them to powder, forms the powder into a dough, encloses it in a steam-tight vessel and subjects the vessel and contents for a protracted period to a temperature of 150ºF. The latent diastase is thus brought into being, while the low temperature and the close vessel completely prevent its volatilization and loss. The diastatic dough is subsequently dried and powdered, and is then packed and labeled, ready for use, demanding no cooking, and no other preparation than simple moistening with milk or water. Used with milk it is found to prevent that tough and curdy coagulation which renders milk so oppressive, “bilious” and indigestible in many cases. The name given to this diastatic food which I have mentioned, is “The Universal Food,” a name suggested by a leading physician, who believed it to be universally applicable to enfeebled conditions in which better nourishment was needed. It is admirably adapted to the nourishment of infants, as diastase is almost entirely lacking during the first years of life, and may wisely be supplied from exterior sources.

The Company’s great work for the multitude, however, is in the preparation of wheat, oats, barley, rye, corn, peas, beans, and other seeds. These are perfectly cleansed from all impurities, the outer bran-coats, husks, and pellicles are removed, and the interior, soluble, digestible food-portion is admirably prepared for ready cooking. Persons who have a distaste for Graham and crushed wheat, and oat-meal and other cereals, find in the Fine Granulated Wheat, the Coarse Granulated Wheat, the Pearled Wheat, Pearled Oats, Granulated Oats, Granulated Barley, Rye, Corn, etc., manufactured by this Company, delicious foods, which, once adopted, are continued from choice.

I leave this important subject with my readers, again urging them to seek to learn more concerning it. To be placed in possession of information which I do not assume to be competent to impart, it is only necessary that you address a postal card to the Health Food Company, No. 74 Fourth Ave., cor. 10th street, New York, N.Y., asking for all its Health Food literature, and appending your address, and you will be quite certain to receive the entertaining pamphlets by due course of mail. The agents of the company, also, cordially respond to calls for circulars and orders for the Health Foods.

Let me ask my readers not to content themselves with sending for and perusing, however carefully, the instructive pamphlets of the Health Food Company. If you are sick you will do well to describe your condition by letter to the company, and its medical head will write you which of the foods are adapted to your case; you can then order a supply of such as he advises. If you are in good health and merely seek to supply yourself with delicate and nutritive substances which will have the effect to keep you strong and well, you will be able to select from their list, without special advice. Advice from the medical man of the organization costs nothing, however, and should be asked in all doubtful or diseased states. J.F.C.