We often assume that the way things are today isn’t the way things used to be; we live in very different times compared to our ancestors. Take, for example, attitudes toward food. A lot of our attitudes about food are negative today, with lots of lists of foods that are bad for us and things we should stay away from.
It’s easy to assume that’s a new way of looking at food, but the fact is that negative ideas about food have been around for a long time. I was looking through some very old magazines and came across a poem from Munsey’s Magazine that illustrates some fairly negative ideas about foods, and a reaction against those ideas.
Munsey’s was a general interest magazine, so the issue that ran this poem also has articles on a war between Russia and Japan, and some short stories. The April, 1904, issue includes a number of poems, and one in particular caught my eye. The magazine apparently offered prizes for submitted poems, since this poem won second place.
What’s interesting is how many food fads and ideas this 114-year-old poem hits. Vegetarianism, teetotaling, eating raw foods, drinking raw water, rejecting canned foods–it’s all here. It even hits on some problems with outdoor activities like playing football and driving the car.
THE NEW HYGIENE.
There’s a new-fangled science that sets at defiance
All efforts to have any good of our wealth.
In eating or drinking, in working or thinking,
Whatever we do, it is bad for our health.
We must not eat toffee; we must not drink coffee;
In cocoa there’s paresis, poison in tea.
Disease germs just swarm in the room that we’re warm in,
And drafts of cold air mean a gravedigger’s fee.
There’s nothing that’s healthful, there’s nothing that’s clean,
If we heed all the rules of the new hygiene!
Raw food is pernicious; if cooked, not nutritious;
Fruit makes us too bilious, and sugar too fat;
Vegetarian diet runs down those who try it,
And meat’s only fit to be thrown to the cat.
If we fry it we spoil it; ’tis deadly to boil it,
And nothing should ever be roasted or stewed;
All canned stuffs infected; fish must be rejected,
And all breakfast foods with suspicion be viewed.
It’s a safe proposition that man will grow lean
If he eats by the rules of the new hygiene!
One tells us ’tis risky to drink any whisky;
Another, teetotal regime will deride;
Wine causes hysteria; milk’s full of bacteria;
Of lager beer many a victim has died.
The typhoid bacillus that’s likely to kill us
Is found in the water we draw from the well,
While that from the river is bad for the liver.
And fouled are the springs that they bottle and sell.
If all this is true, it is plain to be seen
There is naught fit to drink in the new hygiene.
In sports we grow colder, for golf has its shoulder,
Lawn-tennis its elbow, and football its knee;
While automobiling and all kinds of wheeling
Will give us the face that is frightful to see.
We must not dress thickly—that makes a man sickly;
We must not dress thinly—we may catch the grip.
And—here’s the most awful—a kiss is unlawful,
Especially when it is pressed on the lip.
Oh, few will our joys be in life, if we mean
To abide by the rules of the new hygiene!
-Ross Lawrence.
Source: Munsey’s Magazine, Volume XXXI, Number 1, April 1904, pages 24-25.