Malt-Sugar

Malt-Sugar may be briefly referred to, inasmuch as it forms an important feature in Extracts of Malt. It is produced from the starch present in barley, which, with the assistance of moisture and heat, is converted into sugar through the action of a diastase ferment. Invert sugar is produced when cane-sugar is boiled with fruit in the process of preserving. It is a combination of cane-sugar and the sugar of the fruit - the change being effected by the action of the heat and the fruit acid. Invert sugar is less sweet than table sugar, but, like fruit-sugar, much more easily assimilated, for it is partially digested. Many persons who cannot digest cane or beet sugar without inconvenience can take preserved fruits, while others can also take large quantities of sugar in raw fruits. Bearing these facts in mind, sufferers from dyspepsia will be well advised to dispense with sugar in their tea and coffee or on puddings and stewed fruit after cooking, and to take it in jam, marmalade, puddings, honey and similar dishes. For the preservation of fruit cane-sugar is the best. Raw sugar is liable to produce irritation of the stomach in some constitutions, and this is followed by the secretion of mucous. If taken at all in such cases it should be in very small quantities, and well diluted, otherwise it is liable to seriously interfere with digestion. Bearing in mind the fact that fruit-sugar is a natural food of very great energy value, and specially adapted to almost all ages and constitutions, ripe fruit should be much more extensively eaten, especially as it possesses other equally great characteristics. Some young and active persons are able to eat four ounces of sugar in a day, this providing nearly 500 units of energy at a cost of three-farthings when it is 3d. a pound, or of one-halfpenny when it is 2d.

Treacle

Treacle in its various forms is not so useful as sugar, containing as it does only two-thirds to three-fourths of its weight of sugar, the balance consisting of water and impurities.

The Fats And Oils

The Fats And Oils used as food are comparatively few. Animal fats are chiefly confined to the products of cattle, sheep, and pigs, and these include butter, margarine, lard, dripping, and suet. Large quantities of fat, however, are present in ducks, geese, and crammed chickens, and in such fish as salmon, turbot, and herrings. Among vegetable oils the new form of margarine has largely increased the utilisation of those of the palm and the coconut, the pea-nut and cotton-seed, while the oil of the olive is both popular and valuable, although it is often heavily adulterated. Olive oil is more completely absorbed than a solid fat like butter; while butter, like the fat of milk from which butter is made, is more easily absorbed than the fat of meat - especially of mutton and beef. For this reason the oil of margarine, with its low melting-point, is a more valuable food than suet and other hard animal fats. Thus a much larger quantity of butter fat can be consumed when taken in milk than the fat of the joint, which, like suet, contains a large proportion of stearin - a fat with a high melting-point used in the manufacture of candles. If too much fat is eaten a portion is wasted, passing through the body unused; the quantity which can be digested, however, varies with the individual. Fats have hitherto been regarded as expensive portions of our diet, and, measured by the market value of butter and salad oil, this belief was well founded. The introduction of vegetable margarine, however, has reduced the standard of cost of fat, without reducing the standard of efficiency.

Protein

The most important of the various forms of protein are the gluten of wheat, the casein of milk, the albumin of egg, the legumen of pulse, and the myosin of meat. It has been customary to describe protein as a flesh-former, but this term must not be translated improperly. Most people regard meat as flesh just as it comes from the butcher, and they are perfectly right; but as meat embraces the fat with the lean or muscular tissue, the term flesh-former cannot be intelligently applied to a food constituent the special function of which is the manufacture of the muscular portion of the body alone. Protein is essential in the manufacture of milk, the casein of which cannot be constructed unless it is present in the food of the cow.

Objections To Diet Without Meat

It has been claimed that liberal meat feeding supplies a form of nerve energy and brain power which is impossible to the vegetable feeder; that it enables man to resist disease more effectively; that it is essential to children; and that during an illness a patient who is not a meat eater has no balance in the bank to fall back upon. I have referred to the work of Chittenden, who is supported by Bircher, and Hindhede - all of whom have performed original work of the first rank, and who have disproved, not only on themselves but on various classes of men, every one of these claims. The work of Hindhede with his own children, and of Bircher with women and children, as well as with men of numerous nationalities, many of whom I have met, is a complete answer to these claims, although it is just to add that many celebrated Englishmen deplore the excessive consumption of meat. If I may venture to add my own testimony, it is to the effect that the results of a diet without animal food have been precisely the opposite of those which are claimed against it.

It may be pointed out here that one of the cheapest sources of protein is skimmed or separated milk, although, owing to the removal of the cream, the public are prejudiced against it. While they insist on meat on the one hand, they reject this "meaty" milk because of its cheapness and its name on the other. I know of no better example of the importance of the study of foods.

It has been remarked that there is a loss during digestion of the protein of pulses, cereals, and potatoes to the extent of 10 to 30 per cent. - the loss in the potato standing among the highest of all. And yet in the Danish investigations men have lived solely upon potatoes and margarine for several months in succession, while in Ireland whole families have lived upon potatoes alone. With this fact I am well acquainted, as during the famine of 1897-8 I visited hundreds of families in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, and Clare on behalf of the Manchester Guardian - my report being discussed at great length in the House of Commons. I saw the food of those who were living on a normal diet as well as those who were starving, and am able to testify to the great value of the potato as food, where neither bread, meat, nor milk were available. A low meat diet is more desirable for men of sedentary occupations than for those engaged in manual labour, for there is less muscular waste to repair. Liberal meat-eating makes a demand upon the organs of the body in the process of digestion and secretion which unfits them for mental work. How can we point to more striking examples than to those who, in middle or later life, are unfit for work in their office or their study after a luncheon upon meat, or of fish, or of both, followed by cheese? The farm labourer, the gardener, or the carman is not affected in a similar way, although these men can do much better work without meat.