230 Diet and Health
A fondness for skin is an outstanding feature of the Hunza, they do not peel
their vegetables, or wash and soak them to the extent we do. Vegetables play a great
part in their diet and are very commonly eaten raw. ‘They are fond of raw green
corn, young leaves, carrots, turnips, and, as it were to exaggerate their veneration
for freshness, they sprout their pulses and eat them and their first green. This eat-
ing of sprouting pulse or gram is widespread in northern India, and undoubtedly
within it there is a health which there is not in the pulse itself.’
Fuel in Hunza is scarce, and when they do cook their vegetables they are boiled
in covered pots as is the usual habit in this country.
‘But the process is more comparable to our way of steaming and cooking in
their own juice. Very little water is added. When this has been used up more is
added. The water in which the vegetables are cooked is drunk either with the veg-
etables or later. The point is that it is part of the food. It is not thrown away.’
This taking of vegetable water is obviously sensible, for many of the valuable
mineral salts which vegetables contain pass into the water in which they are cooked,
particularly if the vegetables are peeled before cooking. ‘There is abundant evi-
dence from the scientists of the loss that occurs through the throwing away of
vegetable water of phosphorus, calcium, iron, iodine, sulphur, etc. Quite a consid-
erable proportion of the pharmacopoeia seems to have arisen owing to this waste.
Quite a considerable number of the doctors’ prescriptions and patent medicines
may be due to the need to replace the salts of the food in those who suffer from
this loss. The similarity of the medicines and the lost salts is too close for one not
to be profoundly suspicious that the methods of cooking cause or contribute to the
subsequent need of the medicines.’
The Hunza drink milk in considerable quantity, they drink it whole and they boil
the fat from it to form clarified butter or ghee, which they spread on their bread and
also use for cooking. They drink the buttermilk which remains, and both this and
their whole milk they preserve in hot weather by souring. Meat is a ‘rare pleasure’,
most of their livestock being dairy animals. They rarely eat meat more than once in
ten days, and often only about once a month. When they do, they eat all that is edible
in the carcass and stew it together with their vegetables and pounded wheat. But
ranking above all the foregoing in the Hunza diet is fruit. ‘“The Hunza are great fruit
eaters, especially of apricots and mulberries. They use apricots and mulberries in both
the fresh and dry state, drying sufficient of their rich harvest of them for use through-
out the autumn and winter months.” (McCarrison.) They eat the fruit fresh in sea-
son, cracking the stones and eating the kernels as well. Otherwise they take them,
particularly sun-dried apricots, and eat them as they are, or rub them in water to form
a thick liquid called chamus. Dried mulberries they put into cakes as we do sultanas.
They do not cook their fruits. “Fruit is really the Hunza staple. It is eaten with bread,
far more so than vegetables, as it is more abundant.”’ (Schomberg.) ‘“Even the ani-
mals,” said Durand, “take the fruit diet, and you see donkeys, cows and goats eating
the fallen mulberries. The very dogs feed on them, and our fox-terriers took to the
fruit regimen most kindly and became quite connoisseurs.”’ They ferment some of
their fruit juices and on festive occasions drink their own home-made wine.