Farinha

“ Farinha is a preparation from the root of the mandiocca or cassava plant, of which tapioca is also made; it looks something like coarsely ground peas, or perhaps more like sawdust, and when soaked in water or broth is rather glutinous, and is a very nutritious article of food. This, with a little salt-fish, chili peppers, bananas, oranges, and assai (a preparation from a palm fruit) , forms almost the entire subsistence of a great part of the population of the city. Our own bill of fare comprised coffee, tea, bread, butter, beef, rice, farinha, pumpkins, bananas, and oranges. ”

“ Yet the vegetable farina, in this state of existence, though highly 15nutritious, and to many palates very agreeable, is more difficult of digestion, and does not, upon the whole, afford a very wholesome alimentary substance. When too freely used, those kinds of seeds are sure to disagree, more especially if from age the oil has become rancid. They must be considered rather as a delicacy than as fitted to form a portion of our daily food, and with some particular stomachs they never agree. ”

“ A food product called farina, similar to hominy, but with coarser granules than meal and finer than those of hominy, is made from white maize. A similar granulated preparation, prepared from the inner portion of the finest wheat, is similarly named. Both products are employed in the making of gruel, puddings, etc. Farina is an important constituent of numerous prepared foods that are called farinaceous on account of the starch that they contain. In botany the pollen of flowers was formerly called farina. ”

“ Bread should not be used until it is at least a day old. Rolled oats, cracked wheat, etc., may be taken, although with many they cause fermentation. Nearly all cooked fruits are well borne by the stomach, and so are nearly all ripe fruits. Puddings made from rice and custard are easily digested.
Milk is valuable at all times, and if the chronic dyspeptic bears it well, this diet alone will [Pg 31] frequently make a marked cure. If it rests heavy on the stomach, a little lime water may be added to it in the proportion of a tablespoonful of lime water to a cupful of milk. ”

“ 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 gluten is likewise a very nutrient property, but in loaf bread, it principally serves, by its cohesiveness, like gum elastic, or India rubber, to prevent the gas or air formed by the fermentation of the sugar, from escaping or passing off;—and the gas being thus retained, inflates or puffs up the dough, and makes it porous and light. The bran, with its mucilaginous and other properties, not only adds to the nutritiousness of the bread, but eminently serves to increase its digestibility, and to invigorate the digestive organs, and preserve the general integrity of their functions. ”

“ When all plans fail to secure a thorough digestion in the intestine, and unaltered food and fat are passed, while the patient grows thinner and feebler daily, artificially-digested food may be given. The intestine is thus relieved of labor, and time is given for a restoration of activity by rest and an improved tone of all the tissues and organs. Rice, bread, baked flour, potatoes, or barley may be given in combination with malt extract, which converts starch into grape-sugar and dextrin. ”

“ Bread a day old, mixed with milk and sweetened, may be given in connexion with nursing. Gruel, arrowroot, plain bread, Indian and rice puddings as they grow older, and subsequently bread and butter, thickened milk, hasty pudding or Indian, potatoes, and vegetables. Not a particle of flesh should ever be given. By the use of meat the system becomes excited, and diseases of irritation are apt to be produced, which impede nutrition, and lead ultimately to the production 217of scrofula and other organic changes in the glands and bowels, and not unfrequently also in the brain and lungs. ”

“ Farina Balls 1⁄2 cup farina 2 cups milk 1⁄2 teaspoon salt Dash of cayenne 5 drops of lemon juice Yolk of one egg
Cook the milk and farina in a cooker for two hours or more, over boiling water, until all the liquid has been absorbed, then add the other ingredients while still over the water, and when well mixed remove it and spread it on a dish to cool. When cold, roll it into balls one inch in diameter, roll them in sifted crumbs, then in egg to which one tablespoon of water has been added and slightly beaten, and again in crumbs, and fry them in hot, deep fat until a golden brown. ”

“ You get a greater proportion of gluten, and some of the mineral elements of the grain that lie close to the husk; the flour that has an excess of gluten in it will absorb more water than pastry flour, or flour composed chiefly of starch, and it will make a tougher dough, either in the form of pie crust or bread than a flour which has the most starch in it. It is more nutritious than starchy flour, so that if you want tender, rather white pastry and bread, you must make up your minds to sacrifice some of the nutritious elements of the flour. ”

“ Examples: milk, cheese, eggs, meat, fish, cereals, peas, beans, and lentils. The principal constituent of proteid food is albumen. Albumen as found in food takes different names, but has the same chemical composition; as, albumen in eggs, fibrin in meat, casein in milk and cheese, vegetable casein or legumen in peas, beans, and lentils; and gluten in wheat. To this same class belongs gelatin.
The chief office of the carbohydrates is to furnish energy and maintain heat. They contain carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and include foods containing starch and sugar. ”

“ This consists of farinaceous foods such as farina, arrowroot, cream of wheat, corn meal, wheatena, malted breakfast foods cooked thoroughly and given in the form of gruels, and some of the proprietary infant foods, such as Mellin’s Food, Eskay’s Food, Racahout. These foods may require the addition of Taka diastase to make them more readily digested. They leave the stomach more rapidly than any of the others, and for this reason will be found to give less discomfort than the foods containing a high percentage of protein and fat. ”

“ To give the grain in a raw state, or even bruised, or infused in water till it begins to swell and germinate, is, we consider, very disadvantageous; it is, in fact, attended by two evils—in the first place, the greedy animal does not sufficiently grind down the food for the complete extraction of all its nutriment; and, secondly, semi-champed grain is liable to produce indigestion, loss of appetite, and fever. The same effects are produced by mixing the meal with boiling fluid, which converts it into a sort of dough or paste, very unfit for being taken into the stomach. ”

“ Chapman's Entire Wheat Flour is an extremely good food; and wheat, as you will remember, excels other farinaceous substances in its nutritive properties, but it is not so easy of digestion as Liebig. There is, however, scarcely any kind of farinaceous food, among which Nestlé's must not be forgotten, which may not answer for an infant; provided always that at first it is not given oftener than twice a day, that it is not made too thick, nor given in larger proportion than one-third of the farinaceous food to two-thirds of the whey, milk, or whatever it is mixed with ”

“ When this organ is coated, indicating gastric catarrh, small quantities of thin chicken soup, egg albumin, thin barley- or rice-water, are better borne than milk; when the tongue is or has become clean, then milk, pure, diluted with barley- or rice-water, or peptonized, is the best diet. ”

“ For invalids able to digest solid food, rice, cracked wheat, Graham grits, oatmeal, barley, farina and other grains may be prepared and cooked as previously directed in the chapter on Grains.
The various cooked preparations of grains—granola, wheatena, avenola, wheat gluten and gluten meal—manufactured by the Sanitarium Food Co., Battle Creek, Mich., form excellent articles of diet for many invalids, when served with hot milk or cream, or prepared in the form of mush. ”

“ If any constituent is deficient we must supply it; hence variety in food is not only agreeable but necessary to health. Albumen, fibrin, casein and gluten build up the muscles and tissues, while starch, sugar and fat produce the warmth and energy of the body. The mineral substances are necessary for the framework—the bones. Grains, fruits and vegetables contain starch and sugar and more or less gluten; meats contain fibrin and albumen; milk, casein, etc. ”

“ In the last line of the analysis is shown the percentage of the food that is ready for immediate digestion.
Those who feed mainly on half-cooked or soft cereals, such as porridge, rice or other starchy foods, form the habit of swallowing them quickly without proper mastication. When the food is presented to the stomach in such condition, the interior of many granules remains untouched with the digesting juices, and becomes fermented in the intestines as a consequence.
This fermentation in the intestines often produces Bright’s disease, diabetes, rheuma-- ”

“ It is more wholesome, easier of digestion, and more strengthening than bread made of the finest flour. It must be confessed, that the nutrimentive quality is contained in the fine flour; yet, in the branny part is contained the opening and digestive quality; and there is as great a necessity for the one as the other, for the support of health: that which is accounted the worst is as good and beneficial to nature as the best; for when the finest flour is separated from the coarsest and branny parts, neither the one nor the other has the true operations of the wheat meal. ”

“ No animal could live on superfine flour alone but for a short time, as has been proved by experiments on dogs.
But meats, vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, and several other articles in family diet contain the same elements as wheat, though in different proportions; so that it is only an exclusive use of fine flour that is positively dangerous. Still there is no doubt that a large portion of young children using white bread for common food, especially if butter, sugar, and molasses are added, have their teeth, bones, and muscles65 not properly nourished. ”

“ Moreover, I have observed among people in the tropics, as well as in temperate latitudes, that there is a marked difference in the health of persons whose chief food is farinaceous, between those who but rarely eat anything else and are particularly feeble, lymphatic and scrofulous, and those who eat butter or oil with their rice and similar food, or supplement it with sardines in oil, or oil-dressed salads. ”

“ Rye flour contains 2 per cent., wheat flour 1 per cent. of fat.
G. Cellulose in flour. Flour contains more or less fibrin. In order to separate it from the flour, the extractive matters of the flour are washed in consecutive order with water, ether and alcohol, the residue is then boiled in dilute sulphuric acid. The fibrin obtained is then washed and dried. In appearance it looks like wood fiber. This substance is [74] contained also in the gluten and in the envelopes of the starch cells. It is insoluble in water, dilute acids or alkaline. It is indigestible and has no value as a food. ”

“ When well fermented and baked bread is very easy of digestion. It should never be eaten until it has stood at least 24 hours after being taken out of the oven. When newer, bread is apt to disagree with the stomach, frequently producing indigestion, biliousness, diarrhœa, dyspepsia, and other like ailments. Bread prepared from meal containing the whole of the bran is the most nutritious and digestible, and should alone be given to children and growing persons, and eaten by the dyspeptic and delicate. Young infants should never be fed upon bread. See Aleurometer, Alum, Flour, Wheat, &c. ”

“ The pancreatic secretion contains three separate and distinct ferments, which act respectively upon carbohydrate, protein, and fat. The absorption of fat, however, is materially assisted also by the action of the bile.
A part of what we eat always escapes digestion; the unused portion, it has been estimated, is somewhat less than one-tenth of an ordinary mixed diet. The residue from vegetables is notably larger than the residue from meat. The undigested portions of all the food- stuffs collect in the lowermost portion of the intestine and form a part of the feces. ”

“ The farina of grain, and the seeds of vegetables, contain more of the nutritious and essential parts of the plant than any other, as is evident from the use of celery seed, the eighth part of an ounce of which will give more relish to a gallon of soup, than a large quantity of the root or stalk. On the same principle, the fat is the essence of meat, nearly so as the seeds of plants are of their respective species. To establish this fact, a simple experiment will be sufficient. Boil from two to four ounces of the lean part of butcher's meat in six quarts of water, till reduced to a gallon. ”