The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-03-06
AGRICULTURAL.
DigestibiIity OF Cheese.

At the recent meeting of the American
Dairyman's association at Utica, N. Y. Prof.
Arnold read paper on "Cheese and Cheese
making" from which we extract the follow
ing as bearing upon the digestibility of this
article Of fuod:
That cream in cheese is essential to its di-
gestlhillty is proved by experiment in the
artificial digestion of skim cheese. Last win
ter it occurred to me that the value of cheese
as food might be closely Appropriated by oil
gestion with pepsin, As the stomach of the
carniverous hog has an action very similar to
that OF the human stomach, pepsin' derived
from swine, with very little addition of n.y.
drocaloric acid, little Of which is found in
the human stomach, would furnish an imita-
tion of human gastric juice so near like the
genuine as to make experiment with it useful
in determining the behavior of cheese in the
human stomach and its approximate value for
human food. The gastric juice of the hog is
more powerful than that of the human, and
If cheese tailed of digestion under its infu-
ence, it would certainly fail 10 human dges-
ton. presented my idea to DR.. F. E. Engle-
hardt, of Syracuse, who, as most OF you prob
ably know, is one of those accomplished
chemists for which Germany, his fatherland,
is so celebrated, He was favorably impressed
with the suggestion and the value which
would be likely to result from series of ex-
periments in that direction, and very gener-
cusy offered 10 join me in carrying it out,
and to donate his time and services without
compensation, and in the same generous way
the American and Excelsior salt companies
placed their laboratory, with all its contents
at our command, even sent DR.. Englehardt
TO collect such samples as he could obtain,
and we went to work, DR.. Englehardt giving
personal supervision to all the work and
doing most of it with his own hands. We
no oodn o1a,
cheese, and nearly as many analyses, besides
a number of experiments with butter, devo-
ting all the time we could possibly spare d.
ring the year, and including In our work
every variety OF cheese we could find in the
markets of New York and elsewhere. Quite
a variety of samples obtained at the late inter-
national fair have not yet been worked up.
have constructed out of these experiments
a table in which there is a brief description
of each variety of cheese treated, with an
analysis showing the water, fat, casein and
ash it contained, with brief remarks upon the
digested product. The points which the ex-
perimeDts have developed are:
THAT the most thoroughly cured cheeses
digest the soonest and most perfectly. That
cheese from 30 to 60 days old not only digest
more slowly than older cheese, but so much
more impeffectly as to occasion serious loss
offood ia their use besides, as We know, they
affect health unfavorably.
2-Tbat where other conditions are equal,
the rapidly and completeness of cheese dIges-
ton is in proportion to the amount of fat the
cheese contains. This fact has appeared so
invariably, that skimming is always betrayed
in the digestion, and enables the experiment
ter to make closer prediction OF the per
cent. offat the analysis of the cheese will
show.
3-That the less the natural action of rem
~, rsn I'd 80, int
cheese, is allowed to be impeded by the pres
ence of acid, the easier will the cheese digest
and the more nutriment will it yield. This
has appeared as striking fact running
through all our observations. And it has
seemed to matter little whether the interfere
ing acid was developed in the whey in which
the curd was kept lying or whether it was
derived from an excess of whey remaining
unextracted in the pressed curd.