The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking Part 5

4. A steady animal heat, by slow combustion, of 98.

5. Expired breath loaded with carbonic acid and watery vapor.

6. Incombustible animal refuse.

7. Motive force of simple alternate contraction and relaxation in the muscles, which, acting through joints, tendons, and levers, does work of endless variety.

8. A deficiency of food, drink, or air, first disturbs, then stops the motion and the life.

Carrying out this a.n.a.logy, you will at once see why a person working hard with either body or mind requires more food than the one who does but little. The food taken into the human body can never be a simple element.

We do not feed on plain, undiluted oxygen or nitrogen; and, while the composition of the human body includes really sixteen elements in all, oxygen is the only one used in its natural state. I give first the elements as they exist in a body weighing about one hundred and fifty-four pounds, this being the average weight of a full-grown man; and add a table, compiled from different sources, of the composition of the body as made up from these elements. Dry as such details may seem, they are the only key to a full understanding of the body, and the laws of the body, so far as the food-supply is concerned; though you will quickly find that the day's food means the day's thought and work, well or ill, and that in your hands is put a power mightier than you know,--the power to build up body, and through body the soul, into a strong and beautiful manhood and womanhood.

ELEMENTS OF THE HUMAN BODY.

---------------------------------------------------------|------|-----|----- | Lbs. | Oz. | Grs.

---------------------------------------------------------|------|-----|----- 1. Oxygen, a gas, and supporter of combustion, | | | weighs | 103 | 2 | 335 | | | 2. Carbon, a solid; found most nearly pure in charcoal. | | | Carbon in the body combines with other | | | elements to produce carbonic-acid gas, and by | | | its burning sets heat free. Its weight is | 18 | 11 | 150 | | | 3. Hydrogen, a gas, is a part of all bone, blood, and | | | muscle, and weighs | 4 | 14 | 0 | | | 4. Nitrogen, a gas, is also part of all muscle, blood, | | | and bone; weighing | 4 | 14 | 0 | | | 5. Phosphorus, a solid, found in brain and bones, | | | weighs | 1 | 12 | 25 | | | 6. Sulphur, a solid, found in all parts of the body, | | | weighs | 0 | 8 | 0 | | | 7. Chlorine, a gas, found in all parts of the body, | | | weighs | 0 | 4 | 150 | | | 8. Fluorine, supposed to be a gas, is found with calcium | | | in teeth and bones, and weighs | 0 | 3 | 300 | | | 9. Silicon, a solid, found united with oxygen in the | | | hair, skin, bile, bones, blood, and saliva, weighs | 0 | 0 | 14 | | | 10. Magnesium, a metal found in union with phosphoric | | | acid in the bones | 0 | 2 | 250 | | | 11. Pota.s.sium, a metal, the basis of potash, is found | | | as phosphate and chloride; weighs | 0 | 3 | 340 | | | 12. Sodium, a metal, basis of soda; weighs | 0 | 3 | 217 | | | 13. Calcium, a metal, basis of lime, found chiefly in | | | bones and teeth; weighs | 3 | 13 | 190 | | | 14. Iron, a metal essential in the coloring of the | | | blood, and found everywhere in the body; | | | weighs | 0 | 0 | 65 | | | 15. Manganese. } Faint traces of both these metals | | | } | | | 16. Copper metals.} are found in brain and blood, | | | but in too minute portions to be given by | | | weight. | | | |------|-----|----- Total | 154 | 0 | 0

The second table gives the combinations of these elements; and, though a knowledge of such combinations is not as absolutely essential as the first, we still can not well dispense with it. The same weight--one hundred and fifty-four pounds--is taken as the standard.

COMPOSITION OF THE BODY.

---------------------------------------------------------|------|-----|----- | Lbs. | Oz. | Grs.

---------------------------------------------------------|------|-----|----- 1. Water, which is found in every part of the body, | | | and amounts to | 109 | 0 | 0 | | | 2. Fibrine, and like substances, found in the blood, | | | and forming the chief solid materials of the | | | flesh | 15 | 10 | 0 | | | 3. Phosphate of lime, chiefly in bones and teeth, but | | | in all liquids and tissues | 8 | 12 | 0

4. Fat, a mixture of three chemical compounds, | | | and distributed all through the body | 4 | 8 | 0 | | | 5. Osseine, the organic framework of bones; boiled, | | | gives gelatine. Weight | 4 | 7 | 350 | | | 6. Keratine, a nitrogenous substance, forming the | | | greater part of hair, nails, and skin. Weighs | 4 | 2 | 0 | | | 7. Cartilagine resembles the osseine of bone, and is a | | | nitrogenous substance, the chief const.i.tuent of | | | cartilage, weighing | 1 | 8 | 0 | | | 8. Haemoglobine gives the red color to blood, and is | | | a nitrogenous substance containing iron, and | | | weighing | 1 | 8 | 0 | | | 9. Alb.u.men is a soluble nitrogenous substance, | | | found in the blood, chyle, lymph, and muscle, | | | and weighs | 1 | 1 | 0 | | | 10. Carbonate of lime is found in the bones chiefly, | | | and weighs | 1 | 1 | 0 | | | 11. Hephalin is found in nerves and brain, with | | | cerebrine and other compounds | 0 | 13 | 0 | | | 12. Fluoride of calcium is found in teeth and bones, | | | and weighs | 0 | 7 | 175 | | | 13. Phosphate of magnesia is also in teeth and bones, | | | and weighs | 0 | 7 | 0 | | | 14. Chloride of sodium, or common salt, is found in | | | all parts of the body, and weighs | 0 | 7 | 0 | | | 15. Cholesterine, glycogen, and inosite are compounds | | | containing hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, | | | found in muscle, liver, and brain, and | | | weighing | 0 | 3 | 0 | | | 16. Sulphate phosphate, and salts of sodium, found | | | in all tissues and liquids | 0 | 2 | 107 | | | 17. Sulphate, phosphate, and chloride of pota.s.sium, | | | are also in all tissues and liquids | 0 | 1 | 300 | | | 18. Silica, found in hair, skin, and bone | 0 | 0 | 30 | | | | --- | --- | --- | 154 | 0 | 0

With this basis, to give us some understanding of the complicated and delicate machinery with which we must work, the question arises, what food contains all these const.i.tuents, and what its amount and character must be. The answer to this question will help us to form an intelligent plan for providing a family with the right nutrition.

CHAPTER VIII.

FOOD AND ITS LAWS.

We have found, that, in a.n.a.lyzing the const.i.tuents of the body, water is the largest part; and turning to food, whether animal or vegetable, the same fact holds good. It forms the larger part of all the drinks, of fruits, of succulent vegetables, eggs, fish, cheese, the cereals, and even of fats.

Fat is found in b.u.t.ter, lard, drippings, milk, eggs, cheese, fish, meat, the cereals, leguminous vegetables,--such as pease and beans,--nuts, cocoa, and chocolate.

Sugar abounds in fruits and vegetables, and is found in milk and cereals.

Starch, which under the action of the saliva changes into glucose or grape-sugar, is present in vegetables and cereals.

Flesh foods, called as often nitrogenous foods, from containing so large a proportion of nitrogen, are made up of fibrine, alb.u.men, caseine, gelatine, and gluten; the first four elements being present in flesh, the latter in vegetables.

Salts of various forms exist in both animal and vegetable food. In meat, fish, and potatoes are found phosphorus, lime, and magnesia. Common salt is largely made up of soda, but is found with potash in many vegetables.

This last element is also in meat, fish, milk, vegetables, and fruits.

Iron abounds in flesh and vegetables; and sulphur enters into alb.u.men, caseine, and fibrine.

The simplest division of food is into _flesh-formers_ and _heat-producers_; the former being as often called nitrogenous food, or alb.u.menoids; the latter, heat-giving or carbonaceous foods. Much minuter divisions could be made, but these two cover the ground sufficiently well.

For a healthy body both are necessary, but climate and const.i.tution will always make a difference in the amounts required. Thus, in a keen and long-continued winter, the most condensed forms of carbonaceous foods will be needed; while in summer a small portion of nitrogenous food to nourish muscle, and a large amount of cooling fruits and vegetables, are indicated; both of these, though more or less carbonaceous in character, containing so much water as to neutralize any heat-producing effects.

Muscle being the first consideration in building up a strong body, we need first to find out the values of different foods as flesh-formers, healthy flesh being muscle in its most perfect condition. Flesh and fat are never to be confounded, fat being really a species of disease,--the overloading of muscle and tissue with what has no rightful place there. There should be only enough fat to round over the muscle, but never hide its play. The table given is the one in use in the food-gallery of the South Kensington Museum, and includes not only the nutritive value, but the cost also, of each article; taking beef as the standard with which other animal foods are to be compared, beef being the best-known of all meats. Among vegetables, lentils really contain most nourishment; but wheat is chosen as being much more familiar, lentils being very little used in this country save by the German part of the population, and having so strong and peculiar a flavor that we are never likely to largely adopt their use.

About an equal amount of nourishment is found in the varied amounts mentioned in the table which follows:--

TABLE.

Cost about Eight ounces of lean beef (half-pound) 6 cts.

Ten ounces of dried lentils 7 cts.

Eleven ounces of pease or beans 5 cts.

Twelve ounces of cocoa-nibs 20 cts.

Fourteen ounces of tea 40 cts.

Fifteen ounces of oatmeal 5 cts.

One pound and one ounce of wheaten flour 4 cts.

One pound and one ounce of coffee 30 cts.

One pound and two ounces of rye-flour 5 cts.

One pound and three ounces of barley 5 cts.

One pound and five ounces Indian meal 5 cts.

One pound and thirteen ounces of buckwheat-flour 10 cts.

Two pounds of wheaten bread 10 cts.

Two pounds and six ounces of rice 20 cts.

Five pounds and three ounces of cabbage 10 cts.

Five pounds and three ounces of onions 15 cts.

Eight pounds and fifteen ounces of turnips 9 cts.

Ten pounds and seven ounces of potatoes 10 cts.

Fifteen pounds and ten ounces of carrots 15 cts.

Now, because tea, coffee, and cocoa approach so nearly in value as nutriment to beef and lentils, we must not be misled. Fourteen ounces of tea are equivalent to half a pound of meat; but a repast of dry tea not being very usual, in fact, being out of the question altogether, it becomes plain, that the princ.i.p.al value of these foods, used as we must use them, in very small quant.i.ties, is in the warmth and comfort they give. Also, these weights (except the bread) are of uncooked food. Eight ounces of meat would, if boiled or roasted, dwindle to five or six, while the ten ounces of lentils or beans would swell to twice the capacity of any ordinary stomach. So, ten pounds of potatoes are required to give you the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the Irishman fresh from his native cabin can calmly consider a meal of that magnitude, while, as to carrots, neither Irishman nor German, nor the most determined and enterprising American, could for a moment face the spectacle of fifteen pounds served up for his noonday meal.

The inference is plain. Union is strength, here as elsewhere; and the perfect meal must include as many of these elements as will make it not too bulky, yet borrowing flavor and substance wherever necessary.

As a rule, the food best adapted to climate and const.i.tution seems to have been instinctively decided upon by many nations; and a study of national dishes, and their adaptation to national needs, is curious and interesting. The Esquimaux or Greenlander finds his most desirable meal in a lump of raw blubber, the most condensed form of carbonaceous food being required to preserve life. It is not a perverted taste, but the highest instinct; for in that cruel cold the body must furnish the food on which the keen air draws, and the lamp of life there has a very literal supply.

Take now the other extreme of temperature,--the East Indies, China, Africa, and part even of the West Indies and America,--and you find rice the universal food. There is very little call, as you may judge, for heat-producers, but rather for flesh-formers; and starch and sugar both fulfill this end, the rice being chiefly starch, which turns into sugar under the action of the saliva. Add a little melted b.u.t.ter, the East Indian _ghee_, or olive-oil used in the West Indies instead, and we have all the elements necessary for life under those conditions.

A few degrees northward, and the same rice is mingled with bits of fish or meat, as in the Turkish _pilau_, a dish of rice to which mutton or poultry is added.

The wandering Arab finds in his few dates, and handful of parched wheat or maize, the sugar and starch holding all the heat required, while his draught of mare's or camel's milk, and his occasional _pilau_ of mutton, give him the various elements which seem sufficient to make him the model of endurance, blitheness, and muscular power. So the Turkish burden-bearers who pick up a two-hundred-pound bag of coffee as one picks up a pebble, use much the same diet, though adding melons and cuc.u.mbers, which are eaten as we eat apples.

The noticeable point in the Italian dietary is the universal and profuse use of macaroni. Chestnuts and Indian corn, the meal of which is made into a dish called _polenta_, something like our mush, are also used, but macaroni is found at every table, n.o.ble or peasant's. No form of wheat presents such condensed nourishment, and it deserves larger s.p.a.ce on our own bills of fare than we have ever given it.

In Spain we find the _olla podrida_, a dish containing, as chief ingredient, the _garbanzo_ or field-pea: it is a rich stew, of fowls or bacon, red peppers, and pease. Red pepper enters into most of the dishes in torrid climates, and there is a good and sufficient reason for this apparent mistake. Intense and long-continued heat weakens the action of the liver, and thus lessens the supply of bile; and red pepper has the power of stimulating the liver, and so a.s.sisting digestion. East Indian curries, and the Mexican and Spanish _olla_, are therefore founded on common-sense.