Pound of flesh

“ This class of foods contains representatives of all nutritive elements, but is especially characterized by as excess of albuminous matter. But in actual nutritive value flesh foods do not exceed various other food materials. A comparison of the food grains with beefsteak and other flesh foods, shows, in fact, that a pound of grain is equivalent in food value to two or three pounds of flesh. ”

“ The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will haue it. ”

“ So that one pound of rice contains more nutritious matter than two pounds and a half of flesh meat; three pounds of whole meal bread contain more than six pounds of flesh, and three pounds of potatoes more than two pounds of flesh.”
That the human species, taken in its entirety, is no more carnivorous de facto than it could be de jure, is apparent on the plain evidence of facts. ”

“ By the time the bone, scraps, skin and dirty pieces are cut away from a portion of meat representing the rations of a section calculated at three pounds per man, and this again is subdivided into each man's little chunk, it will be found that what was originally considered as three pounds has dwindled to a pound-and-a-half or less. ”

“ Should an animal whose body contains three times as much fat as lean flesh, be supplied with food containing three times as much fat-formers as flesh-formers? To these questions there is some difficulty in replying. There is a relationship between the composition of the body of an animal and that of its food; but the relationship varies so greatly that it is impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy the quantity of fat-formers which is required to produce a given weight of fat in animals, taken in globo. ”

“ Reason makes a concept of man, but the heart perceives the flesh of his body.
"In like manner we must know the groups that englobe us, not by observation from without, but by an organic consciousness. And it is by no means sure that the rhythms will make their nodes in us, if we be not the centres of groups. We have but to become such. Dig deep enough in our being, emptying it of individual reveries, dig enough little canals so that the souls of the groups will flow of necessity into us. ”

“ Of the three classes of food constituents, two—the mineral and nitrogenous—are recoverable in the animal's body and manure; the non-nitrogenous is partly recoverable in the fat. I shall take the case of a sheep, which will consume weekly per 100 lbs. of its weight, 12 lbs. of fat-formers, and 3 lbs. of flesh-formers. Twelve per cent. of the fat-formers will be retained in the increase, but the rest will be expended in keeping the animal warm, and the products of its combustion—carbonic acid and water—will be useless to the farmer. ”

“ Learned men have made very curious experiments; to ascertain how much the several organs throw out of the body, It is found that the skin throws off five out of eight pounds of the food and drink, or probably about three or four pounds a day. The lungs throw off one quarter as much as the skin, or about a pound a day. The remainder is carried off by the kidneys and lower intestines. ”

“ Of dry flesh-substance, including a little skin and jelly, there are seventeen pounds, and that is the working part of the frame. It is by its means the ton-weight can be lifted one mile high in a single day, and that all the moving and acting, of whatever kind, are effected. Remember, then, that the acting part of the living body is flesh-substance, and that of that flesh-substance there are not more than seventeen pounds in a full-grown man. ”

“ I begged to be acknowledged by the Academy as the first who had established the fact that, in order to reduce corpulence without interfering with the general health, it is necessary to live chiefly upon meat, avoiding an excess of vegetable and aqueous food, or of any of which the basis is carbon or hydrogen.
These chemical principles are founded upon facts—upon observation. As I have said, carnivorous animals are never fat, because they feed upon a substance rich in nitrogen—flesh; which flesh makes flesh, and very little fat. ”

“ Equally suited to rich or poor, produce healthy skins, good complexions, and form bone and muscle. One pound weight will go as far as three pounds of butcher's meat, and not cost one-sixth of the price. ”

“ Normal nutrition is not merely the repair of tissue: it is the repair of all the tissues in the body in due proportion. This is a very essential qualification. Fibrous and areolar tissue, muscle, nerve, and fat are daily and hourly wasting in various degrees; and the repair, whether great or small, must be nicely proportioned to the waste in each tissue. If a pound is added to the weight of the body, it makes all the difference in the world whether one ounce is muscle, another ounce nerve, a third ounce fat, and so on, or whether the whole pound is fat. ”

“ The blood, in its turn, increases the healthful glow of the complexion, leads to the increased formation of flesh and muscles and maintains vitality in the organism. The flesh contributes towards the stoutness or rotundity of the limbs and occasions the formation of fatty matter in the system. The fat gives rise to the glossiness (formation of oily or albuminous matter) of the body and primarily contributes towards the firmness and growth of the bones. The bones, in their turn, support the body, and contribute to the formation of marrow. ”

“ The ration allowance of one pound of meat, including bone, a pound of biscuit, two ounces of preserved vegetables, and a quarter of a pound of rice, is quite insufficient for one’s wants in a bracing atmosphere like this. ”

“ The total amount of solid food taken in the twenty-four hours should not exceed two and a half pounds, and not more than one-third of this quantity should consist of animal food. Many persons do not require more than one pound and a half of mixed food. ”

“ In adipose animals the omentum is adipose, in fat animals it is fatty: for the animals with cutting teeth in both jaws are adipose, those that have not cutting teeth in both jaws are fat.
2. Of the viscera in some animals the liver is full of adeps, as in the cartilaginous fishes, for oil is procured from these during the process of decomposition, the cartilaginous fish are particularly free from adeps on their flesh, but the adeps is separated on the stomach. The fat also of fishes is adipose, and does not coagulate ”

“ The average daily quantity of food and drink for a healthy man of active habits is estimated at six pounds. This amount may be divided in about the following {66}proportions: the mineral kingdom furnishes three and one-half pounds, including water and salt; the vegetable kingdom, one and one-half pounds, including bread, vegetables, and fruits; the animal kingdom, one pound, comprising meat, eggs, butter, and the like. This quantity is about one twenty-fourth the weight of the body, as it is generally computed; the average weight of an adult man being placed at 140 pounds. ”

“ Some persons can distinguish, by touch, a difference of half an ounce in a pound weight. Measured by the distance apart at which the points of a divider can be separately felt, the cheek is but half as sensitive as the finger, the finger but half as sensitive as the tongue. ”

“ As the blood is the direct source of supply to all the structures of the body, the material which is being poured out through the supply-pipes,—it follows that those four pounds must contain within themselves flesh-substance, mineral ash, and fuel. ”

“ Lastly, there is the class of fat anæmic people, usually women. This double peculiarity is rather uncommon, but, as the mass of thin-blooded persons are as a rule thin or losing flesh, there must be something unusual in that anæmia which goes with gain in flesh. ”

“ Raising dumb-bells above the head, first with the left hand, then with the right, then with both, beginning with bells weighing a pound or two, and each month, with daily practice, adding a pound to the weight until it reaches about one-twentieth the weight of the person, will bring the desired results. ”

“ Besides so many benefits and useful services conferred on man by this valuable animal, his fat, in a commercial sense, is quite as important as his flesh, and brings a price equal to the best joints in the carcase. This fat is rendered, or melted out of the caul, or membrane in which it is contained, by boiling water, and, while liquid, run into prepared bladders, when, under the name of lard, it becomes an article of extensive trade and value. ”

“ The distinguishing sign of young and old meat is, that in the latter the fat is chiefly collected in masses, or layers external to the muscles; while in the former it is more interspersed among the muscular fibres, giving the flesh a marbled appearance. ”

“ Each year's fleece often amounts in weight to eight to twelve pounds, and in its lifetime the animal may yield a mass of wool far exceeding its [115] weight of flesh and bones in any time of its life. ”

“ But besides water to do transporting work, flesh substance to do active mechanical or moving work, and mineral substance to do passive mechanical or supporting work, there is yet another kind of material within the body. You have as much as six pounds of fat, scattered about or packed away amid the seventeen pounds of dry flesh. ”

“ By “the fat of ox, or of sheep, or of goat,” i.e., the three kinds of animals used in sacrifice, or “the fat of the beast of which men offer a firing to Jehovah” (Lev 7:25) , we are to understand only those portions of fat which are mentioned in Lev 3:3-4, Lev 3:9; not fat which grows in with the flesh, nor the fat portions of other animals, which were clean but not allowed as sacrifices, such as the stag, the antelope, and other kinds of game. ”

“ When animals are subjected to emaciation the flesh disappears, and the creatures become a mass of veins and fibres; when they are over fed, fat takes the place of flesh. Where the flesh is abundant in an animal, its veins are somewhat small and the blood abnormally red; the viscera also and the stomach are diminutive; whereas with animals whose veins are large the blood is somewhat black, the viscera and the stomach are large, and the flesh is somewhat scanty. And animals with small stomachs are disposed to take on flesh. ”

“ Thus, a man weighing one hundred forty pounds would require one and one-half vienos for each ten pounds, or twenty-one vienos of food each day. These weights apply only to people of normal flesh, who desire neither to gain nor to lose.
The fact that either fat or carbohydrates can be used as a source of muscular energy may be taken advantage of in prescribing dietaries for persons whose digestive organs are so impaired that they cannot digest a normal quantity of either of these nutrients, but who could digest a small quantity of either. ”

“ The morsels soften, the fibres of the muscle break short off and come asunder; the fat is set free from the chambers in which it was stored up by the living ox or sheep, and, melted by the warmth of the stomach, floats in great drops on the top of the softened pulpy mass of the half-digested food. Rolled about in the stomach for some time by the contraction of the muscles which help to form the stomach walls, losing much of its proteids all the while to the hungry blood, the much-changed meat is squeezed into the intestine. ”

“ Fats and oils are but little changed during digestion. The fat is divided into little globules by the action of the pancreatic juice and other digestive elements, and is absorbed by the system. Fat forms the chief material in adipose tissue, a fatty layer lying beneath the skin, which keeps the warmth in the body, and is re-absorbed into the blood, keeping up heat and activity, and preserving other tissues during abstinence from food. ”

“ For so regarding it we have not simply the reason that an active substance has its place occupied by an inert substance; but we have the further reason that the flesh of dead bodies, under certain conditions, is transformed into a fatty matter called adipocere. ”

“ ANIMALS WHICH DO NOT GROW FAT.
Those among the horned animals which have teeth in one 76jaw only, and pastern bones on the feet, produce tallow or suet. Those, on the other hand, which are cloven-footed, or have the feet divided into toes, and are without horns, have simple fat only. This fat becomes hard, and when quite cold turns brittle, and is always found at the extremity of the flesh; while, on the other hand, the fat which lies between the skin and the flesh forms a kind of liquid juice. Some animals naturally do not become fat, such as the hare and the partridge, for instance. ”

“ On the other hand, the man who lives chiefly or largely on flesh and eggs as well as bread obtains precisely the same principles, but served in a concentrated form, and a weight of about two or three pounds of such food is a full equivalent to the Irishman's ten or eleven pounds of potatoes and. extras. The meat-eater's digestion is taxed with a far less quantity of solid, but that very concentration in regard of quality entails on some stomachs an expenditure of force in digestion equal to that required by the vegetable-eater to assimilate his much larger portions. ”

“ Fats are absorbed practically entirely by the lacteals. They enter the cells covering the villi, travel thence to the lymph spaces, and so into the lacteal or main lymph channel, whence they are carried to the thoracic duct and the general circulation. From the blood they are absorbed as fat and stored up as adipose or fatty tissue, which is found throughout the body in connective tissue about the organs. Organic salts and water are for the most part absorbed by the portal system, which they reach through the capillaries of the villi and through which they go to the liver. ”