Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes Part 12

Sugar will make fat, and so will starch, cream, rice, b.u.t.ter, and fat meat. As milk will make muscle and fat and bones, it is the best kind of food. Here, again, it is the earth that sends us our food. Fat meat comes from animals well fed on grain and gra.s.s; sugar, from sugar-cane, maple-trees, or beets; oil, from olive-trees; b.u.t.ter, from cream; and starch, from potatoes, and from corn, rice, and other grains.

Green apples and other unripe fruits are not yet ready to be eaten. The starch which we take for food has to be changed into sugar, before it can mix with the blood and help feed the body. As the sun ripens fruit, it changes its starch to sugar. You can tell this by the difference in the taste of ripe and unripe apples.

CANDY.

Most children like candy so well, that they are in danger of eating more sugar than is good for them. You would starve if fed only on sugar.

We would not need to be quite so much afraid of a little candy if it were not for the poison with which it is often colored.

Even what is called pure, white candy is sometimes not really such.

There is a simple way by which you can find this out for yourselves.

If you put a spoonful of sugar into a tumbler of water, it will all dissolve and disappear. Put a piece of white candy into a tumbler of water; and, if it is made of pure sugar only, it will dissolve and disappear.

If it is not, you will find at the bottom of the tumbler some white earth. This is not good food for anybody. Candy-makers often put it into candy in place of sugar, because it is cheaper than sugar.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

1. Why do we need food?

2. How do people get water to drink?

3. Why is it not safe to drink water that has been standing in lead pipes?

4. Why is the water of a well that is near a drain or a stable, not fit to drink?

5. What food do the bones need?

6. How do we get lime for our bones?

7. What is said about salt?

8. What food do the muscles need?

9. Name some flesh-making foods.

10. Why do we need fat in our bodies?

11. What is said of the fat made by alcohol?

12. What kinds of food will make good fat?

13. What do the Esquimaux eat?

14. How does the sun change unripe fruits?

15. Why is colored candy often poisonous?

16. What is sometimes put into white candy? Why?

17. How could you show this?

CHAPTER XII.

HOW FOOD BECOMES PART OF THE BODY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H]ERE, at last, is the bill of fare for our dinner:

Roast beef, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Squash, Bread, b.u.t.ter, Salt, Water, Peaches, Bananas, Oranges, Grapes.

What must be done first, with the different kinds of food that are to make up this dinner?

The meat, vegetables, and bread must be cooked. Cooking prepares them to be easily worked upon by the mouth and stomach. If they were not cooked, this work would be very hard. Instead of going on quietly and without letting us know any thing about it, there would be pains and aches in the overworked stomach.

The fruit is not cooked by a fire; but we might almost say the sun had cooked it, for the sun has ripened and sweetened it.

When you are older, some of you may have charge of the cooking in your homes. You must then remember that food well cooked is worth twice as much as food poorly cooked.

"A good cook has more to do with the health of the family, than a good doctor."

THE SALIVA.

Next to the cooking comes the eating.

As soon as we begin to chew our food, a juice in the mouth, called saliva (sa li'va), moistens and mixes with it.

Saliva has the wonderful power of turning starch into sugar; and the starch in our food needs to be turned into sugar, before it can be taken into the blood.

You can prove for yourselves that saliva can turn starch into sugar.

Chew slowly a piece of dry cracker. The cracker is made mostly of starch, because wheat is full of starch. At first, the cracker is dry and tasteless. Soon, however, you find it tastes sweet; the saliva is changing the starch into sugar.

All your food should be eaten slowly and chewed well, so that the saliva may be able to mix with it. Otherwise, the starch may not be changed; and if one part of your body neglects its work, another part will have more than its share to do. That is hardly fair.

If you swallow your food in a hurry and do not let the saliva do its work, the stomach will have extra work. But it will find it hard to do more than its own part, and, perhaps, will complain.

It can not speak in words; but will by aching, and that is almost as plain as words.

SWALLOWING.

Next to the chewing, comes the swallowing. Is there any thing wonderful about that?