The purposes of food are to promote growth, to supply force and heat, and to furnish material to repair the waste which is constantly taking location in the body. Every breath, every idea, every movement, wears out some part of the fragile and terrific house in which we live. Various vital procedures get rid of these worn and useless particles; and to keep the body in health, their loss needs to be made good by continuously renewed products of product correctly adjusted to renew the worn and impaired tissues. This refurbishing material should be supplied through the medium of food and beverage, and the very best food is that by which the wanted end might be most readily and perfectly attained. The fantastic diversity in character of the several tissues of the body, makes it required that food ought to consist of a variety of elements, in order that each part may be appropriately nourished and replenished.
The food components.
The numerous components discovered in food are the following: Starch, sugar, fats, albumen, mineral substances, indigestible substances.
The absorbable food elements are often grouped, according to their chemical composition, into 3 classes; vis., carbonaceous, nitrogenous, and inorganic. The carbonaceous class includes starch, sugar, and fats; the nitrogenous, all albuminous aspects; and the inorganic consists of the mineral components.
Starch is only discovered in veggie foods; all grains, the majority of veggies, and some fruits, contain starch in abundance. A number of kinds of sugar are made in nature’s lab; cane, grape, fruit, and milk sugar. The very first is obtained from the sugar-cane, the sap of maple trees, and from the beet root. Grape and fruit sugars are discovered in most fruits and in honey. Milk sugar is among the constituents of milk. Glucose, an artificial sugar resembling grape sugar, is now largely manufactured by subjecting the starch of corn or potatoes to a chemical procedure; but it does not have the sweet taste of natural sugars, and is by no indicates a proper alternative to them. Albumen is found in its purest, uncombined state in the white of an egg, which is almost entirely made up of albumen. It exists, integrated with other food components, in many other foods, both animal and veggie. It is discovered plentiful in oatmeal, and to some degree in the other grains, and in the juices of veggies. 100% natural foods consist of components which in numerous aspects look like albumen, and are so carefully allied to it that for benefit they are typically categorized under the general name of “albumen.” The chief of these is gluten, which is discovered in wheat, rye, and barley. Casein, found in peas, beans, and milk, and the fibrin of flesh, are components of this class.
Fats are found in both animal and veggie foods. Of animal fats, butter and suet are typical examples. In vegetable kind, fat is abundant in nuts, peas, beans, in numerous of the grains, and in a couple of fruits, as the olive. As furnished by nature in nuts, vegetables, grains, fruits, and milk, this element is constantly discovered in a state of fine subdivision, which condition is the one best adjusted to its food digestion. As most frequently utilized, in the kind of free fats, as butter, lard, etc., it is not only difficult of food digestion itself, however often hinders the food digestion of the other food aspects which are combined with it. It was doubtless never intended that fats need to be so customized from their natural condition and separated from other food components regarding be utilized as a separate short article of food. The exact same might be stated of the other carbonaceous elements, sugar and starch, neither of which, when utilized alone, can sustaining life, although when integrated in a proper and natural manner with other food aspects, they carry out a most important part in the nutrition of the body. Most foods contain a portion of the mineral elements. Grains and milk provide these aspects in abundance. The cellulose, or woody tissue, of veggies, and the bran of wheat, are examples of indigestible elements, which although they can not be converted into blood in tissue, serve an important purpose by providing bulk to the food.
With the exception of gluten, none of the food components, when used alone, are capable of supporting life. A true food compound consists of a few of all the food elements, the amount of each varying in different foods.
Uses of the food aspects.
Worrying the function which these various components serve, it has actually been shown by the experiments of distinguished physiologists that the carbonaceous elements, which in general comprise the greater bulk of the food, serve 3 functions in the body;
1. They furnish material for the production of heat;
2. They are a source of force when taken in connection with other food aspects;
3. They renew the fatty tissues of the body. Of the carbonaceous elements, starch, sugar, and fats, fats produce the best quantity of heat in proportion to quantity; that is, more heat is established from a pound of fat than from an equivalent weight of sugar or starch; but this apparent benefit is more than counterbalanced by the fact that fats are a lot more challenging of digestion than are the other carbonaceous aspects, and if trusted to provide appropriate product for bodily heat, would be efficient of much mischief in overtaxing and producing illness of the gastrointestinal organs. The fact that nature has made a far more ample arrangement of starch and sugars than of fats in male’s natural diet plan, would appear to suggest that they were meant to be the chief source of carbonaceous food; nonetheless, fats, when taken in such percentage as nature supplies them, are needed and crucial food components.
The nitrogenous food elements particularly nurture the brain, nerves, muscles, and all the more extremely revitalized and active tissues of the body, and also serve as a stimulus to tissue change. For this reason it might be said that a food deficient in these elements is a particularly bad food.
The inorganic components, chief of which are the phosphates, in the carbonates of potash, soda, and lime, help in providing the requisite structure material for bones and nerves.
Proper combinations of foods.
While it is very important that our food should consist of some of all the different food aspects, experiments upon both animals and humans show it is needed that these components, particularly the nitrogenous and carbonaceous, be used in certain guaranteed percentages, as the system is just able to proper a specific amount of each; and all excess, specifically of nitrogenous elements, is not only useless, but even injurious, because to rid the system of the surplus enforces an extra task upon the gastrointestinal and excretory organs. The relative proportion of these components necessary to constitute a food which perfectly satisfies the requirements of the system, is 6 of carbonaceous to among nitrogenous. Scientists have committed much mindful study and experimentation to the determination of the quantities of each of the food aspects needed for the daily nourishment of people under the varying conditions of life, and it has actually become typically accepted that of the nitrogenous material which must make up one sixth of the nutrients taken, about 3 ounces is all that can be utilized in twenty-four hours, by a healthy grownup of average weight, doing a moderate amount of work. Many short articles of food are, nevertheless, deficient in one or the other of these elements, and require to be supplemented by other short articles including the lacking component in superabundance, considering that to employ a dietary in which any one of the nutritious elements is lacking, although wholesale it might be all the gastrointestinal organs can manage, is truly hunger, and will in time event severe outcomes.
It is thus apparent that much care needs to be worked out in the selection and combination of food products. Such knowledge is of very first value in the education of cooks and housekeepers, because to them falls the choice of the food for the everyday requirements of the home; and they need to not only understand what foods are best matched to provide these requirements, however how to combine them in accordance with physiological laws.