A Handbook of Health. Woods Hutchinson
power, and fit into the smallest possible bulk, you would take a protein, a sugar, and a fat in about equal amounts. Indeed, the German emergency field-ration, intended to keep soldiers in the field for three or four days without their baggage-wagons, or cook-trains, is made up of bacon, pea-meal, and chocolate. A small packet of these, which weighs only a little over two pounds, and which can be slipped into the knapsack, will, with plenty of water, keep a soldier in fighting trim for three days.
Butter. The most useful and wholesome single fat is the one which is in greatest demand—butter. This, as we have seen, is the churned and concentrated fat of milk, to which a little salt has been added to keep the milk-acid (lactic acid) which cannot be entirely washed out of it, from "turning it sour" or rancid. The rancid, offensive taste of bad or "strong" butter is due to the formation of another acid call butyric ("buttery") acid.
Butter is the best and most wholesome of our common fats because it is most easily digested, most readily absorbed, and least likely to give rise to this butyric acid fermentation. We should be particularly careful, even more so almost than with other foods, to see that it is perfectly sweet and good, because when we swallow rancid butter, we are simply swallowing a ready-made attack of indigestion. Most people's stomachs are strong enough to deal with small amounts of rancid butter without discomfort; but it is a strain on them that ought to be avoided, especially when good butter is simply a matter of strict cleanliness and care in handling and churning the cream, and of keeping the butter cool after it has been made.
Plenty of sweet butter is one of the most important and necessary elements in our diet, especially in childhood. And if children are allowed to eat pretty nearly as much as they want of it on their bread or potatoes, and plenty of its liquid form, cream, on their berries and puddings, it will save the necessity of many a dose of cod-liver oil, or bitter physic. Cream is far superior to either cod-liver or castor oil for keeping us in health.
Oleomargarine. On account of the expensiveness of butter, there are a number of substitutes sold, which go under the name of oleomargarine. These are made of the fat, or suet, of beef or mutton, mixed with a certain amount of cream and real butter, to give them an agreeable flavor. They are wholesome and useful fats, and for cooking purposes may very largely be substituted for butter. Owing to the fact that their fat is freer from the milk acids, they keep better than butter; and sweet, sound oleomargarine is to be preferred to rank, rancid butter. But it is not so readily digestible as butter is; is more liable to give rise to the butyric acid fermentations in the stomach; is not nearly so appetizing; and its sale as, and under the name of, butter is a fraud which the law rightly forbids and punishes.
The milk is well kept, the bread and candies are under glass, and "butterine" is not sold as butter.
Lard. The next most useful and generally used pure fat is lard—the rendered, or boiled-down, fat of pork. It is a useful substitute for butter in cooking, where butter is scarce. But, even in pastry or cakes, it has neither the flavor nor the digestibility of butter, and the latter should always be used when it can be had.
Bacon and Ham. The most useful and digestible fat meats are bacon and ham, as the dried, salted, and usually smoked, meat of the pig is called. Like all other fats, they can be eaten only in moderate amounts; but thus eaten, they are both appetizing, digestible, and very nutritious. One good slice of breakfast bacon, for instance, contains as much fuel value as two large saucers of mush or breakfast food, or two eggs, or two large slices of bread, or three oranges, or two small glasses of milk, or a quart of berries.
NUTS
How Nuts should be Used. Another form of fat is the "meat" of different nuts—walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. These are quite rich in fats, and also contain a fair amount of proteins, and are, in small quantities, like other fats, appetizing and useful articles of food. But they should not be depended upon to furnish more than a small amount of the whole food supply, or even of its necessary fat, because nearly all nuts contain pungent or bitter aromatic oils and ferments, which give them their flavors, but which are likely to upset the digestion. This is particularly true of the peanut, which is not a true nut at all, but is, as its name indicates, a kind of pea grown underground. Peanuts, on account of their large amount of these irritating substances, are among the most indigestible and undesirable articles of diet in common use. A certain amount of these irritating substances present in nuts may be destroyed by careful roasting and salting; but this must be most carefully done, and it shrinks them in bulk so that the finished product is far more expensive than butter or fat meat of the same nutritive value. Good salted almonds, for instance, cost fifty to eighty cents a pound.
The proper place for nuts is where they usually come on our tables—at the end of a meal. Those who attempt to cure themselves of dyspepsia by a nut diet are simply making permanent their disease.
CHAPTER VII
KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS—FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
The Special Uses of Fruits and Vegetables. We come now to the very much larger but much less important class of foods—the Kindling foods, which help the Coal foods to burn, and supply certain stuffs and elements which the body needs and which the coal foods do not contain. These are the vegetables—other than potatoes and dried peas and beans—and fruits.
Fruits and vegetables contain certain mineral elements, which are not present in sufficient proportions in the meats, starches, and fats. Furthermore, the products of their digestion and burning in the body help to neutralize, or render harmless, the waste products from meats, starches, and fats. Thirdly, they have a very beneficial effect upon the blood, the kidneys, and the skin. In fact, the reputation of fruits and fresh vegetables for "purifying the blood" and "clearing the complexion" is really well deserved. The keenness of our liking for fruit at all times, and our special longing for greens and sour things in the spring, after their scarcity in our diet all winter, is a true sign of their wholesomeness.
Not the least of their advantages is that they contain a very large proportion of water; and this, though diminishing their fuel value, supplies the body with a naturally filtered and often distilled supply of this necessary element of life. One of the best ways of avoiding that burning summer thirst, which leads you to flood your unfortunate stomach with melted icebergs, in the form of ice water, ice cold lemonade, or soda water, is to take an abundance of fresh fruits and green vegetables.
Many of the vegetables contain small amounts of starch, but few of them enough to count upon as fuel, except potatoes, which we have already classed with the Coal foods. Most fruits contain a certain amount of sugar—how much can usually be estimated from their taste, and how little can be gathered from the statement that even the sweetest of fruits, like ripe pears or ripe peaches, contain only about eight per cent of sugar. They are all chiefly useful as flavors for the less interesting staple foods, particularly the starches. In fact, our instinctive use of them to help down bread and butter, or rice, or puddings of various sorts, is a natural and proper one. Like the vegetables, they contain various salts which are useful in neutralizing certain acid substances formed in the body. Soldiers in war, or sailors upon long voyages, who are fed upon a diet consisting chiefly of salted or preserved meat, with bread or hard biscuit and sugar, but without either fruits or fresh vegetables, are likely to develop a disease called scurvy. Little more than a century ago, hundreds of deaths occurred every year in the British and French navies from this disease, and the crews of many a long exploring voyage—like Captain Cook's—or of searchers for the North Pole, have been completely disabled