, 1888-05-06
BEANS BETTER THAN WHEAT.
The Former Said to BE More Especial,
the Food of Civilization.

THAN WHEAT.
The Former Said to he More Especially
the Food of Civilization.
The bean Is a better food thar wheat,
and is more especially the food of civil
cation. Fhe average graham bread has
but 0.5 per cent. of protein, while beans
have 1872 per cent, or two and a half
times as much. The function of protein
as food is principally to form the basis of
blood, muscle, connective tissue, etc.
Herein is the nitrogen that furnishes
nerve and brain nourishment. Graham
bread has IA per cent. of fat, while
beans have 81 per, cent. OF carbohy-
drates, beans have 58.7 per cent. and
graham bread 53.3 per cent, including
woody fiber for the latter. The service
of carbohydrates is to be transformed into
fat and to be burned as fuel, as in the
case of the fats themselves. The chief
use of the carbohydrates of wheat bread
seems to be to serve for fuel, though they
are also transformed into fats. In power
to keep the body warm and to furnish
muscular energy mot muscle), graham
bread hardly equals beans, and if we
take into account the animal fats which
men have always instinctively combined
with beans, no doubt the cooked bean is
much richer than wheat as a heat and
force food. The mineral matters in
graham bread, which are reduced to 1
per e in wheat bread, amount to only
1.G per cent, while beans have SO per
cent. of them. These help largely to
form bone and blood.
In no respect, then, are cooked beans
inferior to graham bread as food, and in
most respects they are more than twice
as nutritious, particularly in those sub
stances that go to brain and nerve nour-
ishment and to the building up of the
muscles and bones of the body. 1t is
fair to presume that beans would have
made n more vigorous man than wheat
has done, with its large amount of starch
to be converted into fat and heat. In
case of famine and a small supply of
food, the advantage of beans over wheat
would nave been considerable, and the
same may be said of them for long
marches and military campaigns. 1t is a
matter of common experience that people
are made corpulent by eating starchy
foods, and these unwieldy bodies are not
so healthy and workable as the leaner
bodies of other people. A good diet for
persons who want to reduce flesh is made
up of leguminous foods, and these have
been eaten in such cases with successful
result. 1t is not easy to over eat the
leguminous foods, for they soon satisfy
the cravings of hunger. Professor At
water maintains that the bodily ills re-
sulting from over eating are greater and
more common than those resulting from
the Incorporate use of alcoholic drinks.
Whether this is fully true or not, the ills
from over eating are incalculable, and
they would nave been and would be
greatly reduced if beans had been sub
stituted for wheat.
Other things equal, tho bean eater will
prevail over the wheat eater and over the
potato and the rice eater. The Arabian
bean eaters came within one battle of
spreading Mohammedan civilization all
over Europe. The superiority of the
bean over wheat would have made Eu-
ropeans q stronger and better nourished
people than they nave been as wheat
eaters, and equally as energetic, and they
would have had the food that would
have made possible, not to say probable,
a higher degree of intelligence.
If beans had been substituted for wheat,
the effect Oh the agriculture of the world
would nave been ~incalculable. In Massa-
chusetts, in 1880, 963 acres produced
Is, 7GS bushels of wheat, or 10 10 BUSH
els per acre. The average product in the
United States in that year was but 10
bushels. The product of Neans in Massa-
chusetts in 1875 was Al, s7Y bushels from
l, 854 acres, Oh 81 bushels per acre.
Therefore, since beans are about two and
q half times as nutritious as wheat (the
animal fat mixed with cooked beans re-
duces the exception IN the matter of
fueD, and since an acre produces twice
as much beans as wheat, then it follows
that five times more nutriment is got
from an acre of beans than from an acre
of wheat.
The western farmer might till but one
acre in five of his wheat area if he could
raise beans, and people would eat them
instead of wheat. The savings of land
tillage in the United States would amount
to four-ffths of the wheat area, or to
A, $50 square miles, according to the
census of 1880, and the same amount of
nutriment would still be got for the
nation md the world-that Is to say, an
area larger than the state Of Pennsyl-
vania, and larger than the state of Ohio,
would be freed from the necessity Of pro-
ducing s~ustenance for the human race,
taking account of the land in the United
States alone. When the time comes.
which is generally expected when the
pressure of population will try the ability
of the soil to sustain it, the substitution
of beans for wheat will be a live ques-
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