Bone meal

“ The diet should be light and laxative and low in protein. Cream soup, bread and milk, crackers and milk, custards, egg lemonade, and gruels, furnish an easily digested list. No tea, coffee, very little meat and no fried food. Where the walls of the stomach are weak and distended, light food six times a day is preferable to a hearty meal, which distends the stomach walls. ”

“ Care should be taken in planning meals for this class to avoid food which requires much oxygen, such as fresh pork, fried food, sausage, warm bread, pastry, griddle cakes, etc. The mid-day meal of a brain worker or business man should be light; a soup, glass of milk (hot or cold) , fruit, bread and butter, vegetable salad, a broiled chop or steak, etc., are suitable for luncheon. ”

“ We do not mean by this simply the cooking of vegetables or the preparations of puddings, but the presentation of dishes intended to take the place of flesh, such as soups and broths made without meat, vegetable stews, lentil fritters and other healthful and nutritious dishes. A vegetarian menu is not so simple as it sounds. It requires knowledge and discrimination on the housekeeper's part to serve a solid meal without flesh or fowl. ”

“ The Diet of the Wet Nurse.—The first point of importance is to fix early and definite hours for every meal; and the mother should see that no cause is ever allowed to interfere with their punctuality. The food itself should be light, easy of digestion, and simple. Boiled or roast meat, with bread and potatoes, and occasionally some sago, rice, or tapioca pudding, should constitute the dinner, the only meal that requires special comment; broths, green vegetables, and all acid or salt foods must be avoided. ”

“ At dinner the girl has had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry and dessert. ‘Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton, that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. ”

“ Cooked savoury food is generally much nicer eaten hot, and this necessitates fires and attention just previous to the meal. We have already said that soft cooked food discourages mastication and leads to defective teeth. Our elaborate cookery is mainly due to our custom of eating so largely of flesh, whilst the eating of flesh would receive a great impetus on the discovery of the art of cooking. Flesh can only be eaten with relish and with safety when cooked. ”

“ Hard foods exercise and develop the jaws and teeth, and promote a good circulation through the jaws, mouth, and nose. They may be supplied by a chicken or chop bone wiped free of the cooked meat, or after nine months by hard crust, hard toast, zwieback, or educator crackers, given at one or two meals every day. Soft, mushy foods as a steady diet are injurious, not only because they fail to supply the needed exercise and circulation, but also because they cling to the teeth, and by fermenting produce their early decay.
Foods containing growth-producing principles are needed daily. ”

“ If the bowels should become slightly constipated, a spoonful of wheat bran, [Pg 1052] thoroughly cooked, and served as an ordinary cereal, should be taken with both the morning and the evening meal.
The quantity of food should be governed by the condition of the patient as to strength, and as to powers of digestion and assimilation. ”

“ The good tact of woman does even more yet; it selects the dishes in such a manner that they mutually compensate for their wants, that is, that each offers to the body what is wanting in the others.
The principal dishes composing a meal are divided into fat-producing and flesh-producing ones. All farinaceous diet provides the body with fat; all albumen substances, with flesh. To support the body, however, it is also necessary to give it salt, from which bones, hair, nails and teeth may be formed. ”

“ Fresh animal food, under the form of butcher's meat, is rarely known to the labouring classes, except in towns, where an occasional meal of it is seen, as well as wheaten bread. Milk is also in use more or less, but is by no means an extensive article of diet. ”

“ A liberal supply of non-stimulating food—in other words, bread, milk, vegetables, fruits, and a farinaceous diet principally—is far superior for the healthy growth of bone and nerve and muscle than a regimen into which nitrogenized materials—flesh-meat, eggs, etc.—enter largely. ”

“ It ought to be made an article of diet more often than it is, as the particles it contains tend to purify the blood from the grossness it receives in partaking of animal food; and when taken at the commencement of dinner, tends to assist the digestion of those substances which form the more substantial part of the meal. ”

“ A few bills of fare are given below which experience has shown to represent combinations of dishes which are palatable and which, if eaten in usual amounts, will supply protein and energy in proportions which accord with usual dietary standards. Menus such as these are more commonly served at lunch or at supper, but they might equally well be served for dinner, the selection of dishes for any meal being of course chiefly a matter of custom and convenience for those who have any range of choice. ”

“ By the substitution of a little cheese and an orange for the oatmeal, a meal containing about the same fuel value and proportion of protein could be arranged, and it would certainly appeal more to the appetite, and furnish better proportions of ash constituents.
In the construction of the menu for the day or meal, we must consider not only food values and time of day and combinations which shall be digestible, but flavor, color, texture, and temperature of our foods. The study of digestible combinations belongs to the science of nutrition. ”

“ Dietetic authorities advise people who are engaged in active muscular work to partake of the more substantial meal in the middle of the day, leaving such articles of food as soup—which is a valuable stimulant after a day of hard work—fruit, cake, etc., for the evening meal, when the system is too much exhausted to digest the more concentrated foods. ”

“ USE OF BONE AND FAT IN SOUP-MAKING.—Bone contains a substance which long cooking changes into a jellylike mass called gelatine. In the center of the bone there is a fatty substance called marrow. This fat in the bone and that in and around the muscles liquefies in making soup stock. In cooling, the fat rises to the top, hardens, excludes the air from the stock, and thus prevents it from spoiling readily. Hence, in soup-making, it is of advantage to use both the fat and the bone with the lean meat. ”

“ Food digested is when we put it into our mouths, our teeth chews it, and our mouth drops it down into our body. We should not eat so much bone-making food as flesh-making and warmth-giving foods, for, if we did, we should have too many bones, and that would make us look funny. ”

“ Convalescent's diet includes the liquid and light diets, and, in addition, all easily digested and nutritious food. For meats, game, especially venison and birds, beef, mutton, and chicken may be given, but never either pork or veal. They are difficult of digestion. Eggs in all ways, soft-cooked, scrambled, poached, and as omelets, well-baked potatoes, creamed potatoes, celery, snow pudding, cream of rice pudding, and tapioca cream, jellies, both those made from gelatine and fruits, Graham bread, Graham gems, rusk, and, in fact, any well-made bread, and good cake. ”

“ But the balanced meal is a gastronomic catastrophe that can only be processed by the very young with high digestive vitality, the exceptionally vital of any age, people with cast iron stomachs which usually refers to their good heredity, and those who are very physically active. ”

“ Under errors of diet, an unusually heavy meal, especially of animal food, and the use of heavy, unfermented bread, or compact, hard-boiled, fat dumplings or puddings, salted and dried meats, acescent fruits, malt liquors, and acescent wines, are enumerated as particularly hurtful in the lithic acid diathesis. ”

“ We have found by experience that, by having one meal consist entirely of fruits and vegetables, the medicinal properties of these foods have a chance to act on the system without interference by starchy and protein food elements.
Dinner is served to our patients between five and six. The items of the daily menu comprise relishes, such as radishes, celery, olives, young onions, raw carrots, etc., soup, one or two cooked vegetables, potatoes, preferably boiled or baked in their skins, and a dessert consisting of either a fruit combination or a pudding. ”

“ The peasants of Switzerland and of Scotland, nourished on bread, milk, and cheese, attain a very old age, and enjoy great bodily strength.
"Where there is too much excitement of the body, generally, from fullness of the blood-vessels, or of any one of the organs, owing to a wrong direction of the blood to it (and in one or the other of these conditions we find almost every body now-a-days) , animal food, by being long retained in the stomach, and calling into greater action other parts during digestion, as well as furnishing them with more blood afterward, must be obviously improper. ”

“ The chest must be enlarged, that the lungs may have full play, and be capable of long-continued, extra draughts upon them; and special diet and special exercise alone can accomplish these ends. All fat-producing foods are struck out, sugar and all starchy foods coming under this head, as well as all puddings, pies, cakes, and sweets in general. Our boy, after a short run, would breakfast on lean, under-done beef or mutton, dry toast, or the crust of bread, and tea without milk or sugar ”

“ Thus, if the diet be deficient in the bone-earths, the bones—as they do in badly-nourished children—become soft and yielding; if the diet is too exclusively composed of such farinaceous articles as rice, potatoes, &c., or with too much fat, it is incapable of yielding the elements of muscular flesh, and the strength declines; if vegetable food is wanting, scurvy is the result. Here, then, we have the first element of Physical Training: the real supply of nourishment calculated to afford every material required by the body. ”

“ A diet of lean meat alone serves to build up tissue. If nothing else be taken, the stored-up fat of the body will be consumed, and the person will become thin. [26] Athletes while in training take advantage of this fact, and are allowed to eat only such food as shall furnish the greatest amount of strength and muscular energy with a minimum of fat. The lean of beef and mutton, with a certain amount of bread, constitute the foundation of the diet. ”

“ So far as mastication is concerned, cooking influences vegetable far more than animal food, for it not only softens it but by rupturing the undigestible cellulose chambers and liberating their contents relieves mastication of one of its essential functions. Wherefore, with the advent of cooking, man’s jaws and teeth began to get smaller, and they have continued to diminish in size up to the present time. ”

“ Brain workers should take their proteid in a form easily digested. In consideration of this fact, fish and eggs form desirable substitutes for meat. The working man needs quantity as well as quality, that the stomach may have something to act upon. Corned beef, cabbage, brown-bread, and pastry, will not overtax his digestion. In old age the digestive organs lessen in activity, and the diet should be almost as simple as that of a child, increasing the amount of carbohydrates and decreasing the amount of proteids and fat. ”

“ The patient will thus unconsciously be induced to take more food. Delicacies and dainty dishes foster pleasure in eating, and a little food between the principal meals will help to make up the necessary amount. Spinach, also egg omelettes filled with spinach, puddings, groat, oatmeal, light dishes prepared with plenty of eggs, sugar, butter and milk, also roasted meat if desired are the best articles of food for anaemic patients. Drinks that are recommended are: strong malt extracts, buttermilk, sour milk, Dech-Manna chocolate, fruit coffees, fruits, berries, honey and Dech-Manna-Diet. ”

“ They will learn that hot bread and griddle-cakes are not meant for little boys and girls, and will take abstinence from meat at breakfast or in the evening, and fried foods or rich desserts at all times, as a matter of course.
At noon, which should be their dinner-time, a more varied diet is permissible. Then there may be soup and some kind of meat for the older children—chicken, rare roast beef, boiled or roast mutton, a piece of steak or a chop—stews entirely freed from grease, potatoes, sweet or white, or some other vegetable, and a plain dessert. ”

“ These necessities granted, cereal foods, such as well-made bread in variety, and vegetable produce, including fruits, should form a great part of the diet consumed, with a fair addition of eggs and milk if no meat is taken, and little of other animal food than fish. On such a dietary, and without alcoholic stimulants, thousands of such workers as I have briefly indicated may enjoy with very little exercise far better health and more strength than at present they experience on meat and heavy puddings, beer, baker's bread, and cheese. ”