Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1894-08-16
THE WAR ON FAT MEAT.

For good many years, the received
teaching of authorities inshygiene has
been that most people ate too little fat
meat; that many cases of emaciation
and consumption were due to the lack
of fats in the food. Lean people have
been urged to swallow as much fat as
they could bring themselves 10 use and
thus save themselves from the most
dreaded of all malaoies.
Now, this is all to be changed Con.
sumption is regarded as the work of a
special microbe or bacillus and the
cherished theory that people who do
not relish fat meat should quarrel
with nature and eat it anyhow is being
relegated to the back shelves and
garrets.
This is to be a VIGOROUS war on fat
meat; and Prof. A. o. Atwater of Wes-
leyan university, Middletown, Connect
icut, who is recognized as the highest
authority on food questions in the
United States is at the head of it.
Prof. Atwater takes the ground that
the voice of nature is as safe q guide
in this matter as in many others on
which it was once rejected but now
sacredly needed. He says: "Indica-
lions of the excess of fat in our food
products are abundant. We may find
them in the quantities of fat of meat
which are cut out of the trimmings"
at the butcher shops and in the fat left
unbeatten on the plates on our tables.
This wastefulness is not mere perver-
seness. 1t is, in part at lest. obedience
to an instinct which leads us to reject
material we do not need for nourish-
ment."
The professor finds, too, indications
that the taste of consumers is chang
ing. Very fat beef is in less demand
than formerly. The same is true of
pork. "The English market" he says
calls for leaner pork than is made in
our great corn growing states. Pork
packers say that their wares find less
ready sale in the south than they used
to. Butchers in the eastern states re.
port falling off in the demand for fat
meats"
This excessive production of fat
in meat, Prof. Atwater argues, is un.
economical IN several ways. A large
amount of vegetable material is re-
CURED to make small amount of fat,
the protein or strength. giving property
is lost in the process, and the fat thus
produced is sold in a food market
where it comes in competition with
other materials of which there's rela-
tive overproduction.
The professor thinks that, as the
farmer is primarily responsible for the
one-sidedness of our dietary, and the
first loser by it, he must be the prime
mover in the reform. He must waste
less feed in producing fat which the
consuming public purchases at a loss.
He thinks the remedy is in growing
crops with more portein. "The needed
increase in protein" he says, may be
obtained by breeding and importing
varieties of grains and grasses richer
in nitrogen than those who we now
cultivate and by growing more legumes,
such as elovers, alfalfa, vetch, seradilla,
cow pease and beans. The legumes do
not require nitrogen in manure, but
do we'll with the less expensive mineral
fertilizers, such as bone phosphate and
potash salts; they obtain nitrogen di-
rectly from the air and convert it into
protein. The farmer needs this protein
for fodder by mixing the lsgumunious
products with poor hay, straw and
cornstalks, which lack portein. A re-
form in our agricultural production
and our diet must come, but it will
come no faster than our farmers learn