The American Democrat (1828)

AUTHOR: Cooper, James Fenimore

KEYWORDS: food, health, morality, nationalism

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Cooper treats diet (and drink) as an important aspect of national health and morality, expressing sympathy with “the vegetable diet.” As the subtitle suggests, the book is Cooper's report on what he takes to be the condition of American democracy, expressly “written in the spirit of censure” and with the aim of “correction” (7). Topics covered range from questions of government to those concerning equality and from the liberty of the press to commerce, for instance. He addresses universal suffrage (by arguing against it) and chattel slavery in relation to which he claims that it is “possible to be an excellent christian [sic] and a slave holder” (173), and that “the African is … better off in servitude in this country, than when living in a state of barbarism at home” (174). It is in a chapter devoted to the idea of civilization that Cooper briefly touches on the problem of health and diet, remarking that Americans are “singularly and unhappily ignorant” of the importance of “cookery” (164). “The art of eating and drinking,” he continues,

is one of those on which more depends, perhaps, than on any other, since health, activity of mind, constitutional enjoyments, even learning, refinement, and, to a certain degree, morals, are all, more or less, connected with our diet. The Americans are the grossest feeders of any civilized nation known. As a nation, their food is heavy, coarse, ill prepared and indigestible, while it is taken in the least artificial forms that cookery will allow. The predominance of grease in the American kitchen, coupled with the habits of hasty eating and of constant expectoration, are the causes of the diseases of the stomach so common in America. The science of the table extends far beyond the indulgence of our appetites, as the school of manners includes health and morals, as well as that which is agreeable. Vegetable diet is almost converted into an injury in America, from an ignorance of the best modes of preparation, whilst even animal food is much abused, and loses half its nutriment (164-165).

Cooper goes on to disparage alcohol abuse before concluding that the questions of diet and drink

are points of civilization on which this country has yet much to learn, for while the tables of the polished and cultivated partake of the abundance of the country, and wealth has even found means to introduce some knowledge of the kitchen, there is not perhaps on the face of the globe, the same number of people among whom the good things of the earth are so much abused, or ignorantly wasted, as among the people of the United States. National character is, in some measure, affected by a knowledge of the art of preparing food, there being as good reason to suppose that man is as much affected by diet as any other animal, and it is certain that the connection between our moral and physical qualities is so intimate as to cause them to react on each other (165).