Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

kamt, a consommé with eggs dropped in it. Eggs are beaten as for scrambled eggs, and dropped into the hot soup by small spoonfuls just before serving. They may also have chicken soup, or krupnik palski, which is prepared with barley. Cereals are eaten not only for breakfast, cooked in milk, but in soups and baked and served with meat. As vegetables are seldom cooked and served without meat, it is necessary not only to prescribe them, but also to show how to make purées and to cook plain vegetables. Kieselle is one of the desserts children like; it is made of blackberries, raspberries, or black concord grapes.1

A constipation diet is a very easy one to find for these people, as they are accustomed to eating many vegetables. Szynka pieczona zkasza, ham roasted with cabbage, or rozbiantere dusgony, roast fowl with vegetables, illustrates how inseparable are their meats from their vegetables. Dusgony, or vegetables, they welcome on a diet list. Coarse-grained cereals they use, as kasga, boiled in milk or baked in water, with milk and fat added during the baking to give moisture.

The diabetic patient finds consolation in the number of fish dishes known to the Poles and Russians. Ryba wgalarecie, or fish in jelly, is much enjoyed. The jelly is made with lemon, and the first layer often has chopped cabbage or celery in it. When this is set the fish, already boiled, is placed upright in it, and covered with more cooled jelly. Another favorite dish is made of the gelatin from the feet of the pig, with meat from the hocks. Ciely, or veal roasted or made into cutlets, may be used; also pork, 1 See Appendix, recipe 34.

)

or wieprzony, prepared in a number of ways. Sledy pocztomy or maatjis herring is often used for supper.

For nephritis patients, it is hard to separate protein from vegetables. Their vegetable soups, made thick with vegetables, are useful in such a diet. Zupa jarzynowa is vegetable soup made with a foundation of chicken stock and any or all kinds of seasonable vegetables. Soup, or rosal, with makoronom, or noodles, cannot be included, but borszoz zabillang can be given. This is a soup made by boiling both the tops and the roots of beets and adding fat and sour cream.

Tuberculosis patients will benefit from the smietanie, or cream sauces, which are used for vegetables, meats, and game. Ovsyanka is a very good oatmeal soup.1 Flaxseed oil with a small amount of lemon juice is a favorite salad dressing.

APPLICATION TO HEALTH WORK

From our studies of dietary backgrounds it is apparent that a family coming to this country from a wholly different environment is under an enormous handicap in attaining a satisfactory diet, particularly when the income is small. Moreover, doctors, nurses, social workers, and even dietitians generally lack knowledge of the native diets and food habits of the foreign born.

Against these limitations must be set the fact that a large number of the foods of foreign-born peoples are well adapted to their physical needs, and that most of these can be obtained in this country. Furthermore, dietary errors are largely due to dis1 See Appendix, recipe 35.

turbance of balance in the diet because of change of environment or new scales of prices. The problem before the dietitian is not so much to introduce a complete "American" dietary, as it is to restore the former dietary balance by supplying lost elements.

KNOWLEDGE OF IMMIGRANT'S FOOD ESSENTIAL Knowledge of the foods of the foreign born and of their native dietaries is the foundation of all success in this endeavor; it is a necessity in dealing with many specific problems of health or of disease, and it is invaluable as a means of mutual understanding and sympathy between the American born and the immigrant. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." The soul of a family may be reached through the daily chores of the household.

The following story illustrates how a sympathetically prescribed diet, recognizing the value of familiar national foods, can aid in winning the friendship of individuals. A Russian woman was asked to interpret for a Ukrainian at a food clinic. She was not much interested at first, but when some of her national foods were mentioned she looked up, and said to the dietitian, "I only been here in this country three years, but you my sister." She then urged the patient to use the food prescribed, and was much more diligent thereafter in her own regimen.

NEED FOR PRINTED MATERIAL

Certain particular needs become evident as the result of this incomplete and tentative survey. There is a demand for printed material for professional workers,

such as visiting nurses, dietitians, domestic-science teachers, and social workers. This material should be published in several forms, as:

(a) A textbook for colleges and hospitals, in which young women are trained as domestic-science teachers, dietitians, or nurses, including a list of foods and the recipes of foreign diets corresponding to wellbalanced American diets.

(b) A book somewhat less formal in character, for dietitians, visiting nurses, and medical-social workers, covering the diets of the different nationalities and races in relation to health, with particular instructions in the preparation of food, as well as descriptive matter and general principles.

(c) Single reprints in leaflet form of this material for each nationality or race, each reprint containing some statement of general principles, a brief account of the dietary background of the race group, and practical recipes. This might not only be available for the worker, but could be given with discretion to the foreign born.

A

Published material which would enlighten Americans regarding the practical utility and enjoyability of many foreign foods could be widely used. study of "Foreign Foods Which Would Improve the American Dietary" would be an Americanizing agent of practical value for the use of home-economic sections of women's clubs and similar organizations. American diet would be improved and enriched, and many Americans would be given a sympathetic appreciation and understanding of our foreign-born population through the practical medium of the kitchen and dinner table.

The great practical interest which everybody has in food should be used in teaching English. There seems to be need for the preparation and publication of an American home-making primer, telling briefly and simply what to buy, how to use American stoves and American utensils, and introducing the best American foods to the reader. Such a primer might be especially good for the foreign born who have just learned or are just learning English. It might also be printed in a foreign language or be bilingual.

INTERNATIONAL MENUS FOR INSTITUTIONS

An international menu should be used in institutions of all kinds receiving any number of foreign born. An international menu is one which is not confined to American dishes, but which contains each day at least one dish especially adapted to one of the nationalities or races represented among the patients. This would demonstrate to the patients that the dietitian has considered them and the psychological effect would help them physically. Thus in a menu for an institution with many different race groups, a characteristic Italian dish might be included one day, a Polish dish another, and the next day the Jewish or Russian patients might be remembered. Such a menu need not make the diet less acceptable to the nativeborn Americans. It would give greater variety and would help the dietitians in their endless search for something new. So all would be better satisfied both physically and mentally.

The work of making up such an international menu is a matter of practical and not difficult detail. Die

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »