[Sca-cooks] Cheese/Onion Sandwiches and Firemen

Honour Horne-Jaruk jarukcomp at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 31 07:37:12 PDT 2011


Respected friends:

> Aelina wrote:
> > Earlier in the discussion some one mentioned Firemen
> eating Cheese/onion sandwiches. Is there any more
> information or details about that tidbit of history?
> > Aelina
> 
--- On Wed, 3/30/11, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:
(Snipped)

> some of the
> urban fire companies in the Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan
> region not having time to eat between call outs.  The
> idea was the companies would set out bread, onions and wheel
> of cheese to make sandwiches whenever they were in the
> firehouse.  No real source remembered.
> 
> Bear

It's likely. My brother was a Captain of fire volunteers (basically unpaid auxiliaries) for the city of San Fransisco.  Every new fireman was told to eat dairy before and after fires, because it "made mucus" in the lungs, which would then trap the smoke and allow them to cough it up.  This advice not only went back as far as he could trace in San Fransisco (late 1800s), when he got to Maryland and joined the local volunteers, he was given the exact same advice with the exact same reason.

Basically, this advice is intentionally triggering a mild allergic reaction. An overload of cow's milk products increases mucus production in varying percentages of the population, depending on ethnic groups (it doesn't happen to Masai, for example).  High levels of mucus in the lungs does increase trapping of particulates -- normally a bad thing, since it can trap bacteria -- and then cough syrup will thin out the stuff and allow it to be expelled. 

Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
(Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict

FORTE EST VINUM, FORTIOR EST REX, FORTIORES SUNT MULIERES: SUPER OMNIA VINCIT VERITAS


      


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