Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1876-04-06
The Effects OF Different Foods.

How DIFFERENT foods differently affect
animal growth is surely an interesting
subject, and especially in the relation,
more or less near or remote, which food
has to the cure or development Of disease.
Some Of the facts here reported are gath
cred from the relations Of individual ex-
perience, and some from the memory of
what have read. Few, if any, of them
are new, and few of much importance, ex-
cept in the connection referred to above.
Perhaps no animals show the influence of
food on their flesh so quickly and so dis
tnctly as swine; and what is true of their
flesh is also, in all reasonable probability,
true OF the rest of the body-bones, blood,
viscera, etc. Thus an accomplished and
experienced butcher will tell with almost
absolute certainty how dressed hog has
been fed by the kind and measure of re-
sistance offered to the knife in the cutting
up. Ii fed slop in excess, or butchers
ofal exclusively, the cellular tissues will
be much increased in substance, and the
fatty part, having a larger portion of
oleine than stearine, will be softer and
more spongy, and in cutting up offer less
resistance to the knife. The carcass of
the log fed and finally fatted on beech
nuts will, when hung up and cold, drop
oil for days; and the clear sides, when
sailed and smoked, will become ranslu
cent. The fat, packing part Of the corn
fed swine, at a temperature not above
sixty or sixty-tive degrees, is harder and
firmer, and offers more resistance to the
knife than that OF swine fed on more al
luminous food, and will keep quite as
well, if not better, in cool ATTITUDES, be-
cause the fat has more stearine than
oleine; but Ill the case of high tempera-
ture, with heat enough to soften or melt
the stearine, corn-fed pork is quite out of
the question, European and Continental
governments rejecting American pork
for ships destined for the tropics
and for expeditions bound to low
ATTITUDES. There is another illustration
of how food affects cellular tissue, in
the fact that corn-fed American clear pork
cannot be used for Harding, since it is quite
too tender to be cut into strings and then
sOwn through or wound round game, to
flavor and enrich it; and for that reason
the custom of larding-a great resource
for the culinary artist-has pretty much
gone out of fashion in American cook
cry. While, then, an exclusively slop or
Otfal diet increases tissue, but decreases
stearine, and therefore makes the product
soft, spongy and oily, an exclusively
corn diet decreases tissue to the extent that
such meat cooks almost entirely away, and
in hot climates softens so as to becompar-
atively worthless. The true way seems
to be to feed corn principally, but to in
crease the albuminous ration to the extent
that there will be considerable addition
of muscle and cellular tissue, and conse-
quently more strength and greater power
of resistance to disease in the creature.
Another illustration and [ have done The
suct of CRASHED and fatted beef, when
made into candles, will not run or melt
when used as such, even in the summer
| climate of Kentucky; but the suet of corn