Coffee

It has been said that coffee-drinking in this country is discouraged by the fact that we don't know how to make it. The truth is that we are so accustomed to use a very small quantity of tea in making a cup that we cannot grasp the necessity for using so much coffee as is necessary to make it really good. A large cup of black coffee cannot be made with less than an ounce. This, however, with the addition of milk, will make three cups of milk-coffee.

Like tea, coffee contains caffeine, and in an ordinary cup about the same quantity. Also for this reason it is a powerful stimulant, and one which prevents many people sleeping. Coffee, too, is not a fit drink for the dyspeptic unless it is exceedingly weak, when its exhilarating properties and the flavour which gives pleasure to the drinker are practically destroyed.

Coffee should be fresh roasted and fresh ground to be at its best. It should be kept in air-tight tins or jars, as its exposure quickly removes its delicate aroma and flavour. It should not be boiled, but made with boiling water, although there are infusers on the market in which the coffee is placed and boiled on the table - makers sometimes recommending boiling for several minutes. Coffee is believed to exert deleterious action on the nerves - as tea does; but it is possible that this is marked only on persons of a nervous temperament, who would be well advised to refuse both. One fact is certain - that, as with alcohol, it is impossible to consistently take a powerful drug like caffeine day by day without permanent harm to the system. A man may drink tea and coffee and keep tolerably well until the end of his days - like some consumers of alcohol - but he is the exception to the rule that the great majority do not, while in his case his days might be prolonged and his health better by refusing the popular drinks.

Cocoa

The cocoa-bean, from which pure cocoa is derived, is somewhat bitter in flavour and contains about one-half its weight of oil. In the preparation of commercial cocoa it is roasted, ground, and deprived of much of this oil, and is then mixed with sugar and some form of starch. In giving evidence before the Committee on the Adulteration of Food a manufacturer stated that cocoa was mixed with sugar and arrowroot, or some other farinaceous material. Cocoa, like coffee and tea, contains a poisonous alkaloid, and this is closely allied to caffeine, to which reference has been made. Nevertheless cocoa is much less of a stimulant than coffee and tea, while it is more of an astringent, and is frequently given in some parts of the Continent in cases of diarrhoea. Cocoa, while useful as a foodstuff, possesses little value when made solely with water - the small quantity employed being less nutritious than the same weight of a hard brown biscuit and butter. When viewed in this way it will be seen that as a food cocoa has no claim on the public owing to its extravagant price.

A similar remark may be made with regard to Chocolate, which is a product of the ground cocoa-bean mixed with sugar and starch. It is certainly a nourishing food, but its price constitutes it a luxury.

Jam

We may fairly assume that, taking one type of jam with another, one-half of its weight consists of sugar, and here we arrive at a test of its fitness as food. An average lump of sugar provides twenty units of energy, Thus, a pound pot of jam would provide 920 units from the sugar alone, or, assuming a consumption of four ounces a day, 260 units when adding the value of the fruit.

I find, that when purchased by the hundredweight, the more popular jams - plum, plum and apple, raspberry and apple, gooseberry, and red-currant - cost 3 1/4d. a pound (1915). At this price 5 lb. of jam cost no more than 1 lb. of butter; but what of its relative value as food?

One pound of butter provides 3600 units, whereas 5 lb. of jam provide 5250. Practically the energy value of 3 1/2 lb. of jam is equal to that of 1 lb. of butter, and at a good deal less cost.

These remarks, however, are not intended as a glorification of jam, which cannot take the place of butter, or an equivalent, fat, although butter is not an essential food. Fat, however, is an essential to health, and it can be obtained in a much cheaper form, without the least disadvantage to the consumer. Where a day's ration includes bacon, milk, and fresh meat, butter is not of importance, and jam may therefore be used.

As there is a limit to the fat which can be eaten, so is there a limit to jam, but the system of a labourer or carter can assimilate and convert into energy what the system of a man in a sedentary occupation, or taking little physical exercise, will reject.

To the man in the street sugar is sugar, but there is a wide difference in the behaviour of that obtained from different sources. Sugar from the cane or the beet, which now provides the sugar of commerce, differs from sugar in milk, grape sugar (dextrose), or the sugar present in fruits.

Sugar present in fruit has a remarkable effect on nutrition, and can be eaten in far greater quantity than raw or commercial sugar. The latter eaten too freely - and a small quantity is often sufficient - will cause irritation, acidity, pain, and other freaks of digestion. When sugar is employed in the manufacture of jam, these phenomena are fewer, or they disappear altogether. The cause is worth knowing, for the wise man will avoid what may cause him distress. The world, however, is not composed of wise men, for I find that appetite rules rather than wisdom, and in consequence medicine flourishes.

Jam which has been well boiled, like that made by the economical housewife, contains a large proportion of "invert" sugar, which is more freely digested than raw sugar, and can be eaten with greater impunity.

This form of sugar is produced in making jam by the action of heat and the acids of the fruit. It is, in a word, a combination of "grape" sugar and fruit sugar, but loses some of its sweetness in the process of cooking. Invert sugar is much less of an irritant than raw sugar, and reduces the trouble caused by dyspepsia. Honey is an excellent example of invert sugar, of which it contains nearly 12 oz. to the pound, and is well known as a delightful, nutritious, and easily digestible dainty, although, as with everything else, too much can be eaten at once.

The most nutritious and useful of all varieties of jam are those made from the plum, a mixture of plum and apple, the damson, the apricot, the gooseberry, the currant, and the whortleberry, which is rich in iron and of special value to the anaemic and nervous. The plum and the apple otherwise stand at the top of the list, but in all cases the skins and the acid, like the malic acid of the apple, plays an important role in the economv of health.

Whatever may be the practice of the consumer of jam in time of peace, it is a moral duty to employ it as an economical food in time of war.

As an adjunct to the breakfast and tea tables it is used as a luxury, and eaten with butter on bread, and sometimes with cake. I have, indeed, in the houses of the super-extravagant, seen cream added as well.

This is all wrong, spoiling alike the moral and physical fibre of the indulgent. Eaten in a rational way jam is a food, and now that butter is dear it can be used with advantage instead. When butter is 16d. per lb. a penny spent upon it buys 225 units of energy, but a penny spent in jam buys 328, or nearly 50 per cent. more.

From this point of view, butter is more costly as a food. In butter, however, there is no other feeding matter than fat. Jam provides the minerals and the protein as well as the producer of energy - sugar. Those who can afford it eat too much butter; to these jam is an excellent change.

In round figures those who are accustomed to eat one ounce of butter, costing a penny, can replace it with two ounces of jam, costing one half. An appetising change is a finely grated apple, mixed with a smashed banana and some condensed milk. This will provide a ready-made jam, costing 2 1/2d. to 4d. per lb. The regular consumer of fruit, raw or preserved, with not too much sugar, will maintain his mental and physical health, given normal exercise, which he can do in no other way.