Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-05-20
Food and Its Preparation.

Food and Its Preparation.
IT is popular notion that man is less
fastidfous, as regards his food, than the
lower animals. We often hear the asser-
ton that beasts eat nothing hurtful to
them, but that mans stomach is COM
mon receptacle for everything, whether
fish, flesh or fowl, vegetable or mineral
There may be some truth in the assertion,
but the faults INDUCED in are in the
preparation and not in the substance of
food.
In eating fruits or any uncooked food
man is more nice than any animal, but
1t is true that in the endless numbers
and varieties of cooked dishes set before
US we swallow down many denominations
which an alligator would turn up his nose
at. And i'll this the cook is in fault. 1t
is a wonder that we are not poisoned
outright by the barbarities in the kitchen
There has been for many years a war
fare between the advocates of vegetable
diet and those who maintain that animal
is as essential as vegetable food. There
is but one general principle which con-
trolls this question, and that is the effect
Of food, All food, of whatsoever char
acter, in the process of digestion is sep
arated into three elements-the watery,
or, strictly speaking, pure water; the
nutritious and the waste, or unnutritious,
refuse portion. All these pass through
the whole process of deglution or assim-
ilatiOn, and all are necessary in the
human economy, because all play their
respective part in that economy
Food consists of azotized or nitroge-
nous portions, chiefly fibrine and gluten
non-azotized portions, chiefly starch and
variable quantities of dextrine, sugar and
inorganic salts, such as carbonates and
phosphates of lime and soda. The azo-
tized elements are most abundant in ami
NAL food, and, since these ezotized ele-
ments are most nutritious, it follows
that animal food is more nutritious. This
is deductve reasoning, and, though not
conclusive, it will bear examination.
1t is interesting to more some of the
ticles we eat. For instance, the proper
tions of water: Mushrooms have 96 per
cent; melons, 95; cabbage, 90; milk, 81 !;
pears, 81; peaches, so; flesh, average rs;
potatoes, rs; sweet potatoes, SO; beans,
IS; rice, IL; wheat flour, 20; Indian corn,
&. The human system is composed large
ly-about rs per cent.-of water. The
whole history of animal life demonstrates
that man REG UireS a greater variety of
food than other animals. The articles
enumerated above are but mere tether
of the almost infinite number which are
used for food. No animals are found
that require or can be induced to receive
anything like so many varieties. Hence
it is impossible to select any few articles
and to say that such are all that are nee
essary for man to eat. 1t is only possible
to select such as can be made digestible,
nutritious and palatable, and to so pre-
pare them as to answer the purposes de-
sired
1t is further interesting to note the
various proportions of nutritious ele-
ments in certain articles, to-wit: Wheat
flour, 10 to IS; flesh, within about the
same limits; dried peas, 20; dried beans,
90; green peas, "a; rice, 7; sweet po-
tatoes, 2 to 5; potatoes, 2. Fruit falls
even lower than potatoes, and yet fruits
are absolutely essential in the human
economy. Again, it is necessary to pos
sess certain proportions of starch, and
we find in rice -four So per cent; in wheat
-four about go per cent; in potatoes
nearly 20 per cent. Besides all these
there is necessary phosphates and car
Donates of lime and soda, and considera-
bic proportions of chloride of sodium, or
common salt. All the elements are con-
tanned in food in variable proportions.
Nature has abundantly furnished them,
but in our systems of cooking we have
contrived to destroy many of the i'm
portant constituents which nature has
taken great pains to provide.
It is a deplorable fact that, as class,
cooks are as utterly ignorant of the
chemical changes which are produced in
cooking as the horse is Of Horticulture.
Even chemists who are eminently prac-
tical in the laboratory forget the first
principles of the science when applied
to domestic economy. Certain of the more
common articles in use are so changed
in cooking that, from being nutritive
and wholesome when fresh, they be-
come noxious and hurtful when they 60
through the kitchens. On the other
hand there are those which raw are unfit
to eat, which become healthful by cook
ing. Fruits and berries are, for the most
part, best in their fresh, native condition.
Among the most delicioust of these the
tropical pineapple, banana, orange, lem