because they do not tax the stomach, the digestion being carried on farther along.
Potatoes and meat make a fairly good diet for those who insist upon eating meat, as the latter furnishes albumen and the potatoes sugar, fats, etc., and these supply the most imperative needs of the body.
An Englishman, Sir William Fairbairn, who has traveled over the earth a great deal to study the influence of foods upon working people, decides that the strongest men in the world are the Turkish laborers, who live chiefly upon bread and fruit. They eat very little meat and drink no spirits or wines whatever. Frenchmen do not eat anything like as much meat as the English and rarely have stomach troubles. They eat twice as much bread as Americans do, and much larger quantities of fruits and vegetables.
Few realize the value of spinach as a food. Yet it is rich in iron, which is the real life of the blood. Lettuce grown in the sunlight has also a large amount of iron, but when grown in dark cellars or out of the sunlight, while it may be tender, it is very poor in iron.
It is well known that both men and beasts fed upon food poor in iron soon become very anemic. On the other hand, animals which have become anemic from this cause very quickly improve when fed upon a diet rich in iron, like carrots, cabbage, and the different grains. Poor people especially suffer seriously from lack of sufficient iron in the blood, particularly when they live and work out of the sunlight. Tuberculosis is very common among those who are poorly nourished and lack iron in their blood.
Leguminous vegetables are prohibited to persons who are predisposed to intestinal and stomach diseases; also in cases of hardening of the arteries and gout. They contain elements which generate uric acid. More of this acid is produced by lentils than by peas or beans. When the secretions tend to an excess of acids, a large quantity of potatoes will help to correct this and to make them alkaline. In some cases of diabetes potatoes are not good, because their use is attended with an excessive elimination of sugar. Sweet potatoes are nutritious, but not so digestible as the white variety.
It is a curious fact that mushrooms, which spring up in a few hours after rain, contain a large amount of proteids, which are the tissue-building elements in food, and almost fifty per cent, of such carbohydrates as sugar, starch, and fat, as well as other valuable substances. When perfectly fresh, mushrooms are very nutritious.
Curd or cheese is nitrogenous food, and feeds the solid tissues of the body. There is more nourishment in cheese that is made from new milk than there is in beef or mutton. Very few realize that cheese is more nutritious than meat. But it is a fact that it contains very much the same constituents, also that it is very much cheaper; but, if taken in large quantities, it is apt to disturb digestion.
On the other hand, the value of cream as a food is entirely overestimated. Dogs fed on it will die in a few weeks, because there is nothing in it to build solid tissues. It is valuable as fuel; its combustion generates heat in the body.
Oysters, if grown in clean water, are very digestible and desirable, although not as nourishing as some other kinds of food. The albumen in fish is very desirable, and for this reason fish is good for people who suffer from exhausting diseases, and when fresh it has the additional advantage of being very easily digested. Much less uric acid is generated by fish, barring salmon, than by meat. Most kinds, except salmon, are good for people suffering from kidney or liver trouble, or gout. Fish is especially good for diabetes patients, as it does not increase the amount of sugar in the system. It is better, however, to accompany it with some of the carbohydrate foods, such as Graham bread, rye bread, fruits, etc. Such a diet will diminish the amount of sugar in diabetes. Fresh white fish has been found of great value in the treatment of hardening arteries.
The flesh of lamb is not very digestible, because of its fat, a high temperature being required to melt the fat. This is not true of lean lamb, but as lambs are usually fat many people digest their flesh with great difficulty. Pork is perhaps the most universally used meat by different peoples of the world, and while it is not easily digested, it has a pleasant flavor when properly cooked. It is doubtful whether people would eat flesh of any kind but for the agreeable flavors developed in cooking. Lean boiled ham taxes the stomach very little in digestion, as it is free from connective tissue.
The flesh of the domestic turkey, which originated in the United States, is much more nourishing than that of chicken. Domestic duck is quite a nourishing food, but it is not suitable for a weak stomach or delicate digestion. Goose is very nourishing, but very difficult to digest because of its fat. The liver of young animals is easily digested and contains considerable phosphorus, and very nutritive minerals, such as iron. The brains of animals are rich in phosphorus and quite easily digested.
Many so-called harmless stimulants, like coffee and tea, make people irritable, and if taken in excess cause permanent injury by the constant enlargement of the blood vessels in the brain. This is due to a temporary paralysis of the nerves in the muscular fibres of the blood vessels, so that they lose their tonicity, and are powerless to restrict the blood flow. All alcoholic stimulants have a similar effect. It is this excess of blood which increases the brain activity, thus producing for a time a feeling of well being, a kind of mental exaltation. But this feeling, as everybody who uses stimulants knows, always has an injurious reaction.
Because tea and coffee produce uric acid in the system some food authorities prohibit them, when all other things which are known to generate it are excluded; but, as a small amount of uric acid is always developed, it is doubtful whether total exclusion of these beverages is absolutely necessary. In certain individual cases of course it is. Cocoa, however, is much more healthful than either. It is also a very mild stimulant and valuable article of food. It is more easily digested than either tea or coffee and less exciting to the nervous system. Chocolate is made of cocoa and a large quantity of sugar, and really is more a food than a drink.
It would be impossible in the space of a chapter, or in a book of ordinary size, for that matter, to name all the different kinds of food and discuss their qualities and effects. The foregoing is merely meant to be suggestive to those who have not made some study of the food question.
The vast amount of ignorance that exists on this question is sometimes tragically, sometimes amusingly illustrated. As an instance of the latter, I know of a French baker who became so fat that he was ashamed to appear on the street because people made so much fun of him. He got so he could not raise his hand to his head to put on his hat. Fortunately for him, some one who knew something about the chemistry of digestion asked him why he did not drop his carbonaceous, fat-producing food and eat nitrogenous food, such as meat, eggs, cheese, etc., and take a great deal of exercise. He acted upon this suggestion, and in a very-short time was perfectly normal again.
I know people who have a perfect terror of their increasing fat who nevertheless continue to eat carbonaceous food and take very little exercise. Yet if the sugars and starches and fats are not burned in the combustion of the body the fat cells will accumulate. How many women are lamenting their increasing fleshiness and resorting to all sorts of drugs to get rid of it; whereas, if they knew the simple laws of the chemistry of food they could largely regulate their weight.
Health is, indeed, so necessary to all the duties as well as pleasures of life that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that, for a short gratification brings weakness and disease upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamors of merriment, condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and the couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his happiness, but also as a robber of the public—as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature.—Samuel Johnson.
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