It is convenient to apply this description to all those substances usually included under the definition animal food, although strictly speaking the latter term likewise embraces eggs, milk, and its products gelatine, beef-teas, beef-juices, and beef extracts. Flesh foods are still the most favoured articles of diet for supplying the body with building material or protein, and herein lies a great danger, because on account of their attractive character there is a tendency to consume considerably more than is required for the purpose of nutrition. Numbers of the middle classes eat 3 1/2 lbs. of meat or its allies per head per week, while those of the upper classes eat close upon 6 lbs.

Even this does not constitute us the greatest meat-eating nation of the world, this distinction belonging to Australia, and it is probably more than a mere coincidence that this country has also the reputation of consuming per head of the population more pills and potions for the relief of constipation than any other country in the world. The reason is not far to seek, for flesh, which is really muscular tissue and consists almost entirely of protein and water, is almost entirely absorbed, and thus leaves no residue for the bowel to act upon.

As most people know, meat should not be consumed for a day or two after the animal has been killed, unless it can be procured immediately after the animal has been slaughtered, and before what is called rigor-mortis sets in. During this time, which commences at a variable period after death, the flesh is decidedly tough, but when it passes away certain acids develop - chiefly sarcolactic acid - which render the flesh substance much more soft and easily digested. Various methods for imitating this process are in vogue; e.g. soaking beef in vinegar and water, rubbing lemon juice over veal before frying or stewing, and eating lamb with mint sauce. No doubt for a similar reason the use of vinegar favours the digestibility of the hard muscles of the crab and lobster.

Contrary to popular opinion, cooking reduces the digestibility of meat, raw meat being digested in about two hours, whilst roasted meat takes quite four hours for full digestion. For a weak stomach no more digestible substance could be found than the juice of a tender steak, and this is easily obtained by scraping with a blunt instrument such as the edge of a table-knife in the direction parallel to the course of the muscular fibre. This spreads the fibres and ensures the collection of the nutrient myosin or pulpy substance of the muscle, which can be seasoned with a little pepper, celery, or salt, and served either as a sandwich or stirred into broth.

Just as the feeding of an animal influences the flavour of its flesh, so the kind of meat we eat is not without its influence on the character of the individual. Compare the stolid, tolerant, beef-fed Englishman with the argumentative and opinionated porridge-loving Scot and the restless vivacity of the potato-fed Hibernian. Kean, the famous actor, carried the matter too far when he varied the food for the part he had to play, choosing pork for tyrants, beef for murderers, and mutton for lovers.

The most easily digested animal foods are soft-cooked eggs, sweetbreads, and boiled white fish, a liberal helping of either of these being disposed of by the stomach in something like two hours, whilst roast goose, pork, salmon, herring, and mackerel and other fat-containing substances may linger therein for more than double that time.

On the whole, however, fish is more easily digested than meat, and in any case is an agreeable change, providing a little more gelatine, a little less protein, and distinctly fewer stimulating extractives than meat. The fallacy that because fish contains phosphorus it is an excellent brain food has been exploded long ago. There are few foods which do not contain some proportion of phosphorus, and fish are by no means more noteworthy in this respect than others. But in any case the nutrition or functioning of the brain is not specially influenced by the administration of phosphorus in any form. Hence fish is no more likely to encourage thought than any easily digested or assimilated food may do by contributing to the growth and nourishment of the body.

Meat-Juice

It is not at all a simple matter to obtain muscle protein or myosin apart from its fibres of connective tissues, etc, and the most popular of beef-juices are by no means so nourishing as they pretend to be, not comparing for a single moment with the nutriment contained in white of egg. The simplest homely method of preparing meat-juice is to cut up the meat into very small sections, soak these for a few hours in water with a little salt, and then squeeze the squares through a piece of muslin. The more elaborate process of first grinding the meat with a heavy pestle and then rubbing it through a fine wire sieve before soaking and straining through muslin is rewarded by a slightly higher proportion of protein.

Many meat-juices on the market are prepared by extraction under strong pressure and subsequent evaporation in vacuo, and contain from 15 to 30 or 40 per cent. of protein. These must not be confused with meat extracts, which in common with beef-tea contain very little protein or any other nutrient, and are mostly of value because of their stimulating extractives. They are, however, decidedly cheaper than home-made beef-tea as usually made, and distinctly more valuable. A special claim has been advanced by the proprietors of Bovril that its stimulating properties not only conduce to the better digestion of all protein foods, but also ensures that they are actually built up into the tissues themselves in a proportion from ten to thirty times greater than the weight of the dry Bovril administered. Whatever truth there may be in this statement is obviously of limited application, because we have seen that the power of the body for storing up nitrogen is very slight. In any case, no meat extract can contain anything which is not to be found in meat itself, so that its beneficial properties are not peculiar and may be found quite as well in the ordinary flesh foods of popular acceptation.