The Mid-Summer Menu (1899)

AUTHOR: Kellogg, Ella Ervilla

KEYWORDS: food, health, veg*nism

Trall, Russell Thacher.

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this article, Kellogg suggests a simple, plant-based diet as particularly appropriate for “the hot days of mid-summer” (474), when neither the consumer nor the cook should be taxed with too much heat. Accordingly, “an excess of fats and sweets, which are especially heat producers, should be avoided” (474). “Stimulating drinks and foods of every kind,” she continues, “including tea, coffee, flesh-foods, gravies, sauces, and dishes highly seasoned with pepper and other strong condiments which inflame the blood and fan the vital fires, should likewise be discarded from the menu in hot weather” (474). Instead, Kellogg suggests a diet based predominantly on “seeds, nuts, and fruits” (474). There is a reason, after all, that many fruits ripen in the summer months. While fruits are thus “a food par excellence for hot-weather use,” “nuts and cereals,” too, “are now manufactured into so many delicious, palatable, and pleasing foods that one can arrange a bill of fare for a hot day, both appetizing and nutritious and with - what will be appreciated as a boon by most housewives - almost no cooking” (474, 475). Particular recommendations include: “granose biscuits, wafers, rolls, sticks, and zwieback”; “fresh and stewed fruits and succulent vegetables”; “almond butter or nuttolene”; “nut sticks” and “malted nuts” (475).