The self-contradictory guide to natural health

Woo hoo! Today I have a book from one of my favorite genres!

The Beginner's Natural Food Guide and Cookbook (Judy Goeltz, first printing 1975, but mine is from 1981) is one of those crazy-ass 1970s health food books with pages and pages of pseudo-scientific rules that make cooking and eating in the way the author deems healthful sound almost impossible.

In fact, I would argue that the book itself admits as much, as so many of the recipes in the latter half of the book-- the part devoted to recipes-- apparently violate the rules she sets out in the earlier half of the book.

One of the easily spotted contradictions is in this recipe for Sam's Pancakes:

You don't have to have read a lot of health food books to be a bit surprised by the recipe calling for white flour (even if it is unbleached) alongside the soy flour and wheat germ. Page 46 declares "the story of white flour and white bread is bad enough that [Goeltz] flatly refuse[s] to eat it" and 76 insists that readers throw out both bleached and unbleached white flour. In short, it seems pretty odd that this recipe offers white flour not just as an optional substitution for readers still getting used to "health food," but as a regular ingredient.

(Enjoy the lopsided recipes, by the way! This book has some weird issues with the way the spine is glued, so you're going to have to tilt your head for a lot of them.)

Even though the Panamanian French Toast looks pretty spartan by French toast standards, well, it should still be on the author's unacceptable list.

What's the problem with this one? Well, the guide section suggests that for milk, only fresh raw milk should be used. The option to use reconstituted powdered milk contradicts Goeltz's assertion that it is "an unbalanced food" and that removing water from milk completely ruins its nutritive value.

I was also pretty amused to see that Goeltz couldn't entirely resist the siren song of that ubiquitous casserole ingredient, canned cream of mushroom soup.

Even the author can't overlook the apparent issue here, nothing that "mushroom soup contains some undesirables" and suggesting a substitution of mushrooms sautéed in butter mixed with milk thickened with arrowroot and seasoned with Worcestershire sauce. Concerns about health aren't enough for her to simply list the substitution and drop the canned option, though.

I'll admit, I couldn't get all the way through the guide at the beginning of the book, so it's possible that Goeltz somehow reconciles all these instructions to use ingredients she condemns. However, it seems more likely that she has so many rules about what is acceptable and what's not that she just forgot/ ignored them sometimes to have enough recipes to fill out the book.

One rule she definitely followed, though, was adding what she termed "honegar" (a mixture of equal parts raw honey and cider vinegar) to all kinds of things, as it was somehow supposed to aid digestion.

Here's just one recipe that uses her favorite concoction:

As if a tuna and sprout sandwich isn't discouraging enough, make sure it's seasoned with honegar.

(Interesting side note: The guide suggests that a tablespoon of honegar stirred into a cup of water is the only appropriate drink with a meal, as milk is not easily digested and "water will dilute the digestive stomach acid." However, the full menus never recommend honegar water as a beverage, usually suggesting fruit juice, tea, Pero (a coffee substitute), or MILK instead.)

I want to leave you on an indulgent note, so here is a recipe that invites two diners to split a cake containing half cup of butter topped with as much honey as they would like for breakfast.

That's healthy '70s style! (Well, it is as long as you ignore the option to use reconstituted milk. Ha!)