Food ration

“ The vegetable ration consisted of pea meal, linseed meal, wheat bran, ground oats, Indian corn meal, wheat middlings, gluten meal, and skimmed milk. Before the experiment had been long under way it was noticed that the birds receiving the meat food were developing rapidly and evenly while those that received the purely vegetable diet were becoming thin and uneven in size. ”

“ Let the proportions follow the example given in wheat, milk, and eggs, which have all the elements needed and in proper proportions. According to this rule, use unbolted flour rather than superfine. In selecting food, have reference to age, climate, and state of the health. Meals should be at least five hours apart, that the stomach may rest. Do not eat between meals, as it mixes partly digested food with the new supply, and impedes digestion. Do not eat too much, because it impedes digestion, and overtaxes, and thus weakens, the organs that must throw off the excess. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fruits when ripe and in good condition are best eaten raw; cooking spoils the flavour. Food requiring mastication and encouraging insalivation is the best. Food is frequently made too sloppy or liquid, and is eaten too hot, thus favouring indigestion and decay of the teeth. The cereals and pulses can only with difficulty be eaten raw. When cooked in water the starch granules swell and break up, the plant cells are ruptured, the fibres are separated and the nutritious matter rendered easy of digestion. The flavour is greatly improved. Cooking increases our range and variety of food. ”

“ It is furnished chiefly by meats, fish, cheese, milk, eggs, cereals, and legumes. (2) Fats, which furnish heat and energy, but are chiefly valuable for storing a reserve supply of fat in the body. They are furnished largely by butter, cream, olive and similar vegetable oils, bacon and other fat meats. (3) Carbohydrates, which furnish heat and energy. They [Pg 2] are supplied chiefly by potatoes and other vegetables, cereals, fruits, and sugars.
People who are eating the proper amount and kind of food should approximate the normal weight [3] for their sex, age, and height. ”

“ Such persons stand in no need of the more abundant and more substantial nutriment which is essential to those who are daily engaged in occupations exacting much muscular labour. In the preparation and distribution of food, this I believe to be an important point, and one which should be held steadily in view. For the labourer the food must be in part solid, requiring mastication and insalivation, and not rapid of digestion. Food, however nutritious, which is too quickly digested, is soon followed by a sense of hunger and emptiness, and consequent sinking and debility. ”

“ Vegetarians, then, are correct in theory when they state that a diet of vegetables may contain everything necessary to sustain life. But a mixed diet containing meat is healthier. A purely vegetable diet contains much waste material, such as the cellulose forming the walls of plant cells, which is indigestible. It has been recently discovered that the outer coats of some grains, as rice, contain certain substances (enzymes) which aid in digestion. In the case of polished rice, when this outer coat is removed the grain has much less food value. ”

“ And the reason is not because these substances have no azote or nitrogen in them; nor is it because man necessarily requires a variety of alimentary substances, but simply and exclusively because the anatomical construction and vital powers of the alimentary organs, are constitutionally adapted to alimentary substances which consist of both nutritious and innutritious matter; and therefore a due proportion of innutritious matter in the food of man is as essential to the welfare of his alimentary 22organs, as a due proportion of nourishment is to the support of his body. ”

“ Thus, then, alike for maintenance, for increase, and for the exercise of force, the exigencies of the system are characterized more by the demand for the digestible non-nitrogenous or more specially respiratory and fat-forming constituents than by that for the nitrogenous or more specially flesh-forming ones. Hence, as current fattening food-stuffs go—assuming, of course, that they are not abnormally low in the nitrogenous constituents—they are, as foods, more valuable in proportion to their richness in digestible and available non nitrogenous than to that of their nitrogenous constituents. ”

“ To rice, rich in starch, they add butter and cream; with peas, they serve fat bacon; salt-fish has less nourishment than its egg sauce; beef steak is balanced by boiled potatoes. But the customs of the kitchen often err, and we have much to learn that our artificially stimulated appetites fail to teach.
Not only is the deficient supplied, but the indigestible is removed. Bran from flour, paring from potatoes, cellulose from vegetables go to feed animals whose digestions are stronger than ours, and who utilise our discarded food to produce other in a form more fitted to our powers. ”

“ The proper adjustment of the relative quantities of the great groups of nutritive elements in the food is a matter the importance of which cannot be over-rated, for it is in fact the foundation of successful and economical feeding; and this will be readily understood if we consider what would be the result of giving to an animal a supply of food containing a large quantity of nitrogenous and a deficiency of fat-forming compounds. ”

“ Bread requires for itself, especially when calculated per unit, but little gastric juice and but little acid, while the fat which excites the pancreatic gland [Pg 272] insures a rich production of ferment both for itself and also for the starch and proteid of bread. Fat alone does not count by any means as a heavy food, as may be seen from the fact that large quantities of lard are consumed in certain districts of Russia with impunity. ”

“ In vegetables, the absorption of food is thus regulated chiefly by the circumstances of heat, moisture, and light, under which the plant is placed, and by the consequent necessity which exists at the time for a larger or smaller supply of nourishment to carry on the various processes of vegetable life. According to this arrangement, nutrition is always most active when the greatest expenditure of material is taking place. ”

“ When by these or other means we convert vegetable tissue into dextrin and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we shall extend our food supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes, turnips, mangold-wurzels, &c., will become delicate diet for invalids; horse beans, far more nutritious than beef; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood shavings, plus a little leguminous flour to supplement the nitrogenous requirement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is often advisable to double the amount of lime-water—i.e., use two ounces to each twenty ounces of food.
The malted foods and all other foods containing much sugar usually aggravate the symptoms.
The intervals between meals should generally be half an hour longer, and sometimes an hour longer, than when digestion is normal.
The quantity given at a feeding should generally be less than with a normal digestion. Usually a smaller quantity of a strong food succeeds better than a larger quantity of a weak food. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How different is the case with us moderns. Since the opening of the era of agriculture and cooking, man has enormously multiplied his supplies of saccharide, and he now consumes large quantities of starch which has been freed from its cellulose framework by cooking, milling, grinding, and the like, and reduced [Pg 143] to a soft or pappy form, such as milk puddings, porridge, boiled potatoes, and new bread, all of which can be swallowed with little or no preliminary chewing; and when food can be swallowed easily, without mastication, few will take the trouble to masticate it. ”

“ Cereals, eggs, and milk may be added to increase their food value. Cereals in the form of gruels or delicate puddings, as cornstarch blancmange and tapioca cream, are easily digested. Vegetables are best given rather sparingly, and only delicate, mild-flavored ones, such as spinach or asparagus, if digestion is much disturbed. In getting an invalid to take sufficient food, much depends upon the attractiveness of the service. Remember that very little things, like a fingermark on a glass, or coffee spilled into the saucer, may take away appetite and prevent enough food being eaten. ”

“ A man of ordinary appetite might satisfy his hunger on potatoes or on rice, without by any means supplying his system with a sufficient amount of flesh-forming food. On the other hand, if a man were to live on bread and beef alone, he would load his system with an amount of nitrogenous food, although not taking what could be considered an excessive amount of daily nourishment. ”

“ The potential energy of the food is converted into heat or muscular work or other forms of energy. In being thus utilized, food protects body substance or previously acquired nutritive material from consumption. When the amount of food taken into the body is in excess of immediate needs, the surplus may be stored for future consumption.
Ordinary food materials, such as meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, &c., consist of inedible materials, or refuse, e.g. ”

“ There is plenty of carbon in coal, but who would expect the animal stomach to digest it? So there is nitrogen in saltpeter and gun-cotton, but they are not in a suitable condition or form for diges [52] tion, and hence have no food value. Most raw vegetables are indigestible in the human stomach, but cook them, and thus put them in a proper condition, and they become nutritious foods.
There are few, if any, perfect foods. Every food needs to be supplemented with something else. Hence it is that both men and animals want variety. ”

“ For all who are occupied with severe and continuous mechanical labor, a mixed diet, of which cereals and legumes form a large portion, and meat, fish, eggs, and milk form a moderate proportion, is more nutritious and wholesome than chiefly animal food. For those whose labor is chiefly mental, and whose muscular exercise is inconsiderable, still less of concentrated nitrogenous food is desirable. A liberal supply of cereals and legumes, with fish, and flesh in its lighter forms, will better sustain such activity than large portions of butcher's meat twice or thrice a day. ”

“ If the substance passes rapidly through the digestive process, it may induce a recurrence of the disease. Thus the simple preparations which are not stimulating, as water-gruel, are better for a sick person than the more digestible beef and fish.
297. The question is not well settled, whether animal or vegetable food is best adapted to nourish man. There are nations, particularly in the torrid zone, that subsist, exclusively, on vegetables; while those of the frigid zone feed on fish or animal food. In the temperate zone, among civilized nations, a mixed diet is almost universal. ”

“ While any symptoms of derangement are present, particular attention must be paid to the diet, which should be of a soothing, lubricating, and light nature, as instanced in veal or chicken broth, which should contain but little salt. Rice, batter, and bread puddings will be generally relished, and be eaten with advantage; but the stomach is too much impaired to digest food of a more solid nature. ”

“ This rule applies with especial force to food of a starchy nature,—bread, potatoes, oatmeal, rice, etc. In order to digest food of this character it must be very thoroughly cooked and when finally placed upon the table it should be of such consistence that it requires chewing before it can be swallowed. Not only is this necessary from the standpoint of breaking up the larger particles into smaller ones, thus permitting the food to pass freely through the stomach and intestine, but it is of the greatest importance for it to be thoroughly soaked with the saliva during the process. ”