The Portland daily press., 1881-07-11
Instinct as a Guide in pietetics.

.
"Instinct," as Falstaff says, sis great mat
ter" and it is curious and instructive to note
how, in the absence of scientific knowledge, it
has guided the human race in the selection and
preparation of their food as we'll as such knowl-
edge could have guided them, and in some
cases even better. It has sometimes been
right when science for the time was wrong,
and the latter has eventually had to acknowl-
edge the mistake it had made. 1t is not many
years since the discovery was announced that
the bran of wheat has a high nutritive value,
and forthwith we were admonished by dietetic
reformers that fine wheaton bread was not an
economical food for the workingman But
that unscientiic parsonage had learned to pre-
fer the white loaf to the coarse brown one, and
declined to be a convert to the new theory.
His scientific brother naturally ascribed this to
the force of habit or prejudice, and was very
severe upon the obstinate wastefulness of the
poor in throwing away an important part of
their scanty fare. But, as we now know, the
instinct that led the workingman to stick to
the bread which the experience of many gen.
erations had taught him to prefer was right in
its choice. The brown bread did, indeed, con-
ohAh AiOiO AuollLl1Cu tudu lilo WulUo, DuG IN
the process of digestion the body got more nm
triment from the latter than the former The
action of the bran particles on the alimeatary
canal caused the coarse bread to pass through
it too rapidly, and the loss in this way was
greater than the gain in the other. Improved
processes now furnish us a fine flour in which
the old waste of nutritious material is largely
prevented; but even under the old method of
milling, the notion that "white bread is the
poor mans food" was correct. 1t was brown
bread that was the luxury, suited to the dys-
peptic rich man, but too dear for the healthy
and hard-working poor. Science was too
hasty in its first inferences and has since
learned that the digestibility of food and its
aptitude Tor assimilation must he considered,
and not merely its chemical composition.
Equally based upon sound principles is the
workingman's liking for animal food. Scien-
titic men have demonstrated that vegeta BILE
food contains essentially the same nutritiye
matter, while it is good deal cheaper They
have explained that the fbrine of flesh has a
very close analogy to the gluten of wheat, and
is fitted to serve the same purpose in nourish-
ing the body, and so with animal fats and veg
etable oils, and the other leading constituents
OF the two kinds of diet; but the poor man
nevertheless persists in spending as much of
his hard earnings for meat as he can possibly
every day. he will have it when he can, if only
once week. Recent German Investigations
prove that this preference for flesh has some
what the same economical arguments in its
favor as that for the fine bread in comparison
with the coarse 1t has long been known that
as general rule, flesh is easier of digestion,
and is therefore more perfectly assimilated
than bread and other vegetable food. We
must consider not merely how much nutri-
ment each puts into the body, but how much
of it remains there and how much is rejected
as waste. Good authorities have stated that
if equal nutritive quantities of each are eaten,
the loss from the vegetables is twice as much
as from the animal food; but it would seem
that the waste of nutriment is often much
greater in the case of vegetables.