George Julius Drews

As generations move away from them, old ideas become new again. Just as foraging has become popular in the past few years (see last post), so has the idea of eating raw foods. George J. Drews wrote about “unfired food” in 1912 in Unfired Food and Trophotherapy. (Troph simply means “preparing and combining provisions for the unfired diet.”) His ideal dinner consisted of soup, salad, a “brawnfood” (such as two ounces of unfired wafers with nut butter or three ounces of unbaked bread or cake) nibblers, and fruit.

Drews’ Book About His Food Beliefs

Drews also anticipated today’s juicing craze with his “health drinks.” Besides typical “ades” like lemon and limeade, he suggested a tonic drink of beet juice, rhubarb juice, honey and water.

A bit more unappetizing was his suggestion for oatmeal fruit soup: 6 1/2 ounces of grape juice, 1 ounce oatmeal, and 1/2 ounce of olive oil, beaten together and left to soak for five minutes before serving.

Drews was convinced that natural foods could prevent disease and help heal the body; he also had a high distrust of medical drugs and their effects on the body. He scoffed at people who ate unnatural cooked foods and who were then willing to swallow “nauseating drugs irrespective of the dangerous after effects the expected cure may lead to.”

Grocery Stores of the Period Were Full of Unnatural Foods

Drews may have been an unwitting feminist, since he characterized housewives as “imprisoned vassals” who were tied to the kitchen because of the unnatural American diet. “She must stand over a miniature furnace for an hour in the morning and breathe the poisenous [sic] odor of broiling flesh, and spend another hour among the grease and slime of pots . . . . “