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Show COMPARATIVE VALUE OF FOOD. In a recent lecture on the chemistry of food, by Professor Church, some suggestive points of dietetics were well brought out. Of all the cereals, says Mr. Church, wheat yields the best bread. This is believed to be due principally to the character of the nitrogenous matter of wheat. The main constituent is fibrine, and it can readily be obtained for examination by making a little flour into a dough with water, and then washing the starch out by means of a stream of water. There is then left a grayish-yellow, tough, elastic mass, which is gluten. Speaking of peas, beans and various kinds of pulse, it was pointed out how much more nearly the different kinds agree in the composition than the cereals do. The great drawback to the use of various kinds of pulse is that they are so difficult to digest. They are an excellent theoretical food, according to analysis, but they are a severe tax on digestion. Of all the beans none presents a better typical food than the Soy bean. Lentils have been much spoken of lately as a good food, and they undoubtedly approach to a good typical food, but they are bitter, astringent, and not easy of digestion. It has now come to be pretty well recognized that the food of a man doing hard work should have flesh-formers to heat-givers in proportion of 1 to 1 , and that the food of a child should have 1 to 7. Bread gives 1 to 7, where the heat-givers are more than even a child wants; so it is not a good food by itself. Pulse gives (taking an average) 1 to 2, which is far too small. In these calculation heat-givers are reckoned as starch. Potatoes give 1 to 10, according to the latest analyses, the old 1 to 8 being evidently an error. Onion is 1 to 1, an excellent proportion, though onions are not much in favor as food. In looking at the relative values of flesh-formers and heat-givers in food, the actual amount of water must not be forgotten. |