Food Values. #0213

--Diet has become the subject of special study, and many doctors, like Mitchell Bruce, Robert Hutchinson, Burney Yeo and others, have revolutionized the views once held upon the question of food and drink. It is agreed by the faculty that most folk, for instance, eat too much meat, while the use of vegetables and fruits and nuts is recommended on a wider scale than ever. Two important considerations are commonly lost sight of, namely, the necessity of thorough mastication and the imprudence of drinking at a meal. Gladstone used to say that he chewed every mouthful thirty times, and the reason why is obvious. Saliva plays an essential part in digestion, and the more patiently food is chewed, therefore, the more fully is it intermixed with saliva. It will now be clear why it is unwise to drink at meals. Since perfect mastication is desired, it must be foolish to bolt or swallow food and yet this is unavoidable if people acquire and persist in the habit of washing down their food with wine, spirits, beer, or even water. All food contains a large proportion of water, but the process of digestion itself will be aided if water be drunk an hour after a meal. Water will suffice. In point of fact, nothing assimilates so well with food as cold water, or milk and water; while alcohol is not a food and too often acts as a brain poison. These are general principles, and it will be applied in practice. The best foods for building up the human frame, stated in order of utility, are cheese (Cheddar, Dutch, or Cheshire); haricot beans and peas; fowl (chicken for choice); lean beef or mutton; salt herring, smoked haddock, and salted halibut; oatmeal porridge (properly cooked) and milk, but no sugar; eggs (the yolk being more nutritious than the whole egg); wholemeal bread; moderately fat pork and bacon; nuts (Brazil, sweet-almond, and walnut); chocolate and cocoa; fresh fish (mackerel, cod, halibut); dried fruits (figs, dates, raisins, prunes); milk ( fresh and butter); vegetables (greens, mushrooms, cabbage, spinach, asparagus, artichoke, onion, sprouts, lettuce, parsnip, celery, sealskin, tomato, leek, potato); and fresh fruit (banana, fig, grape, plum, raspberry, strawberry, lemon). The foregoing schedule of values brings out the interesting and all-important fact that many of the most wholesome articles of diet are also the cheapest. Beans, milk, oatmeal, wholemeal bread, cheese, haddock, herring, meat, nuts and eggs are valuable and cheap, while oysters, which in this regard are comparatively worthless, are likewise a distinct luxury. Other foods not named are valuable in other respects, though they are poor body-builders. For example, green salads are useful for their salts, and sugar, oil and butter for supplying heat and energy, while water not only aids digestion but helps carry off the waste products from the system. It would appear, therefore, that a judiciously-selected diet provides sufficient variety from day to day to tempt the appetite, and at the same time furnishes the body cheaply with its most important elements.
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