In which a magazine tries to sell you on fiber and bran

Oh, yeah! It's that time again. 🎆 Time for some 1970s health food! 🎆

Today we have The Abridged Edition of the Saturday Evening Post Fiber & Bran Better Health Cookbook (Cory SerVaas, M.D., Charlotte Turgeon, and Fred Birmingham, 1977). The fact that The Saturday Evening Post made cookbooks somehow escaped me until I cam across this apparently lesser-known volume. (A quick Google search suggests that their All-American and Family cookbooks were more popular, but I have never been popular, so I guess it's fitting I have a more obscure entry. I'm sure it's more interesting anyway!)

How about a nice fiber and branful dinner menu? To show that this "health" cookbook isn't afraid of salt or sugar, we'll start off with a main dish of Raisin Ham Loaf.

I think the title is a missed opportunity. After all, this recipe also has bran cereal in it, so why not Raisin Bran Ham Loaf? If you consider that it's also got the mandatory '70s healthy recipe ingredient of nonfat dry milk, you might even consider this the precursor to current milk 'n cereal bars that kids grab for breakfast under the pretense that they're not actually candy bars. It's just that this version also has ham.

We'll need a salad to go with that Raisin Bran Ham. How about some of that perennial favorite, Sunshine Salad?

Ha! If you thought this would be the usual sweet carrot-and-pineapple goodness, you were wrong. In fact, even if you thought it was the weird Lutheran off-brand, you were wrong. This one doesn't even have gelatin! It's just a very health-foody mixture of bulgur, sprouts, and sunflower seeds in a vinaigrette. Whee.

Let's just move on to the dessert. How about a hunk of something green that's frozen solid?

I imagine avocado with lemon and honey isn't too bad, but a lightly sweet avocado ice cube is not exactly what most people hope for when they hear "dessert." It just seems like a recipe to make two things that people usually like-- avocados and dessert-- disappointing.

If all else fails, you can sneak a snack. The cookbook recommends keeping Super Seed Mixture in the fridge for whenever you need a little something to keep you from getting hangry at everyone within a 10-block radius.

I don't know, though. If the choice is between yelling at everybody who crosses your path and eating a spoonful or two of damp seeds, buckwheat, and rice out of the fridge, well... I'm not entirely sure which would be more satisfying. Fiber and bran might be good for what we politely call digestive health, but we might want to think about the impact on emotional and social health too...