Automatic Mastication

Have you ever heard of "The Great Masticator"? (Health food quacks had racy names in the Victorian era since there were so few outlets for being racy.) That's just the fancy name for Horace Fletcher, the health guru who insisted that food should be chewed well past the point that was practical or appetizing, and so, fittingly enough, some early adopters of blenders referred to them as "Fletcherizers."

One of those people was our old friend (and also health food quack) Gayelord Hauser, author of The Gayelord Hauser Cook Book (1946/ 1963). For our leisurely weekend snack, I've brought you some Fletcherized drinks! First up is something you will think is familiar until you actually look at the recipes: nut milks.

Nut milks are not creamy, dairy-like concoctions as they are today, but fruit juices with pulverized nuts meant as "builder-uppers" for the "needlessly thin and weak." While combinations like pecans and pineapple sound pretty appealing to me, I imagine early "Fletcherizers" churned out pretty gritty concoctions. (The coconut variation seems to admit as much, noting that it "tastes better strained.")

If Fletcherized nut/ fruit "milks" aren't your thing, there's the ever-popular raw-eggs-and-fruit combo, like Banana Eggnog:

If you're squeamish about raw eggs, there's the delicious-sounding Cream of Soya Milk:

The first variation is kinda like actual soy milk now, but the variations are more like the nut "milks" above.

My favorite in terms of truth in advertising is this recipe, though:

Those Calcium Cocktails should really contribute to the daily total for that mineral, with the full tablespoon of cream or cottage cheese adding 1-2% of calcium's daily value to that cup of juice. It's recipes like these that let you know the automatic Fletcherizer is really worth that splurge. Now get out there and chew up your weekend!