Food for the traveler — Story, Setting & Ideas

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Authors: Roper, Dora C. C. L. (Dora Cathrine Cristine Liebel), 1873- Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Cooking, American; Menus Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 8,379

Reading time 37 min

Text sections 1

For Food for the traveler — Story, Setting & Ideas, the stored edition analysis reports 8,379 words, 37 min estimated reading time, and 1 detected text section.

The text analysis averages about 15.0 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Cooking, American,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #27245

This 1916 guide by Dora C. C. L. Roper examines diet for travelers and brain workers, blending food chemistry, hygiene, and moral arguments on meat eating, with lists of laxative and constipating foods and advice on adapting to new climates.

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FOOD _for the_ TRAVELER

OVER 100 MENUS for three meals per day

Food for the Traveler

Dora C. C. L. Roper, D.O.

R. S. KITCHENER, PRINTER, OAKLAND, CAL. 1916

Man is composed of what he has assimilated from his spiritual, mental and physical food

These pages are dedicated to those who are seeking light on the question of rational living and to all who are suffering from the effects of wrong living. Thought along this line expresses growth and progress, and with it comes knowledge. Common sense and judgment, following a natural instinct, will go a long way toward attaining better health. But those who, through the constant use of cooked, or highly spiced and fermented food, have lost their natural instincts and intuitions, will find the study of the science of dietetical chemistry of inestimable value toward a better understanding of natural laws, and be enabled to make the selections and combinations of foods more suitable to their temperament.

Before the question as to meat eating and vegetarianism can be solved, we must consider the first principle of nature, which is the law of self preservation. Thereafter we may be able to think and strive to save the lives of animals, now cruelly sacrificed largely for the sense gratification of man. The artificial preparation of food is a fine art, and no doubt has helped much toward the development of our central nervous system.

The ordinary mixed diet with the addition of meat two or three times per week is the safest method for most people who are compelled to work eight, ten, or twelve hours out of every twenty-four and have to deprive themselves of the proper amount of fresh air, sunshine and physical exercise, which brings all the muscles and organs of the body into proper action.

Inharmony, disease, and misfortune are largely caused by living a life contrary to the laws of nature.

The fulfillment of high ideals must be accompanied by common sense and judgment, so it becomes an evolution instead of revolution. The evolving of man from the stage of a jelly fish to a being possessed of a bony framework in an upright position by the eating of animals has developed a higher self. After having reached this stage of evolution the nature of some people has become so highly sensitized that meat, as a food, becomes repugnant to them. What they need is a stepping stone. The very food which has produced this state of over refinement or destruction must be used for construction and minimized by degrees.

In examining the claims of the disciples of vegetarianism it is well to consider those nations whose constitution and customs of work and education resemble our own. And in doing so we find that while nearly all European nations, as well as many of the Orient, practice moderation in meat eating, still they are for the most part only "near vegetarians," and therefore should not be used as examples in an argument for vegetarianism.

It is possible for normal individuals under fairly normal conditions of life to nourish perfectly their bodies on a vegetarian diet, provided they are willing to live mainly on sun-kissed foods instead of on a mass of sloppily-cooked, devitalized, starchy vegetables, and soft nitrogenous foods that burden the digestive organs and produce obesity and slow consumption.

I hope that the menus on the following pages will be a help to all who seek simplicity from a standpoint of health as well as economy.

Note: For preparation of foods, consult Scientific Feeding.

Some people think that we become like the food we eat. This is true when the vibrations of what we eat are stronger than the vibrations in our bodies. All food consumed has a vibration of its own and unless the vital force within can change the rate of vibration of the food eaten and tune it to the vibration of the body itself, one cannot become nourished, or in other words "he becomes like the food he eats." There is but one force or energy in the body, which is life or "spirit." Under normal conditions this force has in itself all the power to harmonize with the vibrations of the foods taken into the body. Provided there is a demand for food in the form of true hunger.

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Dora C. C. L. Roper’s Food for the Traveler (1916) opens with a striking claim: “Man is composed of what he has assimilated from his spiritual, mental and physical food.” This sentence sets the tone for a work that treats diet as a holistic, almost philosophical matter. The book is structured as a series of short, declarative sections—on meat eating, vegetarianism, brain-worker hygiene, and immigrant adaptation—rather than a continuous argument. Roper frequently moves between scientific assertion and moral exhortation, as when she writes that “inharmony, disease, and misfortune are largely caused by living a life contrary to the laws of nature.” The text’s recurring images include the body as a machine requiring proper fuel, and food as a “stepping stone” in human evolution.

From Jellyfish to Upright Man: Evolution as Dietary Argument

Roper frames human dietary history as an evolutionary progression. She writes that “the evolving of man from the stage of a jelly fish to a being possessed of a bony framework in an upright position by the eating of animals has developed a higher self.” This image—the jellyfish as a starting point—recurs in her argument that meat eating, while once necessary, may now be outgrown by “highly sensitized” individuals. She advises a gradual transition: “The very food which has produced this state of over refinement or destruction must be used for construction and minimized by degrees.” The structure here is notable: Roper does not simply advocate vegetarianism but presents it as a stage in a natural, almost inevitable progression, provided one uses “common sense and judgment.”

Laxative and Constipating: A Binary Food System

One of the book’s most concrete features is its classification of foods into two opposing lists. Under the heading “Laxative Foods” Roper includes “apples, oranges, figs, carrots, parsnips, bran, oil, butter, cream, olives, yolks of eggs, pecans, walnuts, Brazil nuts, cucumbers, onions, greens, butter sauces.” Opposite these, “Constipating Foods” are “skim-milk, liquid foods, fine flour bread, potatoes, tapioca, white of eggs, gluten, mush, cheese made from skim-milk.” This binary structure—common in early 20th-century dietetics—reduces complex nutrition to a simple opposition. The lists appear without explanation of mechanism, relying instead on the reader’s trust in the author’s authority. The recurrence of such categorical lists throughout the text gives the book a reference-manual quality.

The Brain Worker’s Regimen: Sleep, Exercise, and Air

Roper devotes a distinct section to “Diet and Hygiene for Brain Workers,” prescribing a detailed daily routine. She recommends “at least nine hours” of sleep “in a well ventilated room, facing east or south,” and warns against “poisonous beverages, tobacco and all forms of drugs.” The advice is precise: “Dress by an open fire or in a sunny room. A chill before breakfast produces indigestion.” She also insists on “short walks out of doors before retiring” for those with cold hands and feet. The structure here shifts from food lists to behavioral prescriptions, linking mental work to physical habits. Roper’s tone is authoritative, as when she declares, “Avoid constipation. Combine mental work with moderate amounts of useful and enjoyable exercise.”

The Immigrant’s Table: Adapting to a New Climate

A surprising section titled “The Immigrant” addresses readers who have left their birth country. Roper warns that “to depart entirely from their old customs and habits is as dangerous as to neglect the study of the new environment.” She describes the variable climate of the United States—extreme heat and cold, wind storms, dryness—and notes that “tropical fruits and vegetables which are looked upon as luxuries in Northern Europe are necessary articles of food in the country where they grow.” The advice is practical: the stranger should “by degrees learn to eat them.” This section reveals Roper’s awareness of her audience’s mobility and her belief that diet must be recalibrated to geography. The movement from general principles to specific regional advice is a recurring structural pattern in the book.

Roper’s Food for the Traveler is best approached as a period document of early 20th-century nutritional thought, not as a modern guide. Its value lies in the way it weaves together evolutionary theory, moral vegetarianism, and practical hygiene into a single, sometimes contradictory system. Readers interested in the history of dietetics or the intersection of food and migration will find the most reward here. The book’s brevity—under 8,400 words—makes it easy to sample, but its dense lists and abrupt shifts reward careful rereading.

I keep thinking about that old travel guide’s quiet insistence that what we eat shapes how we meet a new place. It’s a gentle idea, not forceful. And it reminded me of another soft-spoken book, First lessons in the principles of cooking — Reading Companion, which treats the kitchen the same way—slowly, thoughtfully, as if patience itself were the main ingredient. Both linger like a warm, familiar taste.