Part 18

The large part of the egg, as other proteins, is changed, mostly in the stomach, into peptone, absorbed as peptone and then changed back again into protein after absorption. That not digested in the stomach is changed in the intestine, as is the case with other proteins.

Eggs are, no doubt, excellent articles of food for nutrition and for tissue building. They contain more water than cheese, but are more concentrated than milk or oysters. They have practically the same relative value in the diet as meat, and make a very good substitute for meat. Egg yolk in abundance is often prescribed where it is necessary to supply a very nutritious and easily assimilated diet.

One of the best methods of preparing eggs, which is especially valuable for those having delicate stomachs or for those who need to build up red blood corpuscles with the iron in the yolk, is in egg lemonade or orangeade. Thoroughly beat the egg, add the juice of half a lemon or orange, sugar to taste, and fill the glass with water.

The citric acid in these fruits partly digests the egg, changing it into egg albumin,—the egg becomes limpid, no longer stringy. From this condition the gastric juice quickly changes it to peptone.

Grape juice, cream, and cocoa may be used in place of lemon or orange, in order to give variety where it is necessary to take many of them, but the grape juice acid does not partially digest the egg as the juice of the lemon does.

Eggnog is another means of taking raw eggs.

One method which any housewife can use to test the freshness of eggs is to drop them into a strong, salt brine made of two ounces of salt to a pint of water. A fresh egg will at once sink to the bottom. After the third day the surface of the shell will be even with the surface of the water and with increasing age they will rise still higher.

There is a prevalent opinion that if an egg is boiled hard it is difficult of digestion, but this depends entirely upon the mastication. If it is masticated so that it is a pulp before swallowed, a hard boiled egg is digested as readily as a soft boiled one. If it is not thoroughly masticated, then an egg should not be boiled longer than three to four minutes, or should be put into boiling water and allowed to remain in the water for six minutes without actively boiling. The latter method cooks the egg through more evenly. Another method of cooking the yolk evenly with the whites is to put the egg in cold water, let it come to a boil, and then again immerse in cold water. Or the egg may be put in cold water, let come almost to a boil, removed from the stove, and let stand ten to twelve minutes in the hot water. Any one of the last three methods cooks the white and the yolk evenly.

Carbo-Nitrogenous Foods

Under this class come cereals, legumes, nuts, milk, and milk products. In these foods the nitrogenous and carbonaceous elements are more evenly proportioned than in either the carbonaceous or nitrogenous groups. The different food elements in this group are so evenly divided that one could live for a considerable length of time upon any one food. Some animals build flesh from nuts alone, while the herbivorous animals live upon cereals and plants.

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Under cereals, used by man for food, come wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, and corn. As will be noted by the table below, cereals contain a large proportion of starch and are therefore to be used largely for heat and energy. Rice contains the largest proportion and next to rice, wheat flour.

TABLE V—CEREALS

—————————————————————+——————+———————+——————+—————————————+———— | | | |Carbohydrates| |Water |Protein|Fat +——————+——————+Ash Food Materials |Per |Per |Per |Starch|Crude |Per |Cent |Cent |Cent |etc. |Fiber |Cent | | | |Per |Per | | | | |Cent |Cent | —————————————————————+——————+———————+——————+—————————————+———— Wheat | 10.4 | 12.1 | 2.1 | 71.6 | 1.8 | 1.9 Rice | 12.4 | 7.4 | 0.4 | 79.2 | 0.2 | 0.4 Oats | 11.0 | 11.8 | 5.0 | 59.7 | 9.5 | 3.0 Rye | 11.6 | 10.6 | 1.7 | 72.0 | 1.7 | 1.9 Breads and Crackers: | | | | | | Wheat bread | 32.5 | 8.8 | 1.9 | 55.8 | .....| 1.0 Graham bread | 34.2 | 9.5 | 1.4 | 53.3 | .....| 1.6 Rye bread | 30.0 | 3.4 | 0.5 | 59.7 | .....| 1.4 Soda crackers | 8.0 | 10.3 | 9.4 | 70.5 | .....| 1.8 Graham crackers | 5.0 | 9.8 | 13.5 | 69.7 | | 2.0 Oatmeal crackers | 4.9 | 10.4 | 13.7 | 69.6 | .....| 1.4 Oyster crackers | 3.8 | 11.3 | 4.8 | 77.5 | .....| 2.6 Macaroni | 13.1 | 9.0 | 0.3 | 76.8 | .....| 0.8 Flours and Meals: | | | | | | Flour, wheat | 12.5 | 11.0 | 1.0 | 74.9 | .....| 0.5 Corn Meal | 15.0 | 9.2 | 3.8 | 70.6 | .....| 1.4 Oatmeal | 7.6 | 15.1 | 7.1 | 68.2 | .....| 2.0 —————————————————————+——————+———————+——————+—————————————+————

There is no part of the world, except the Arctic regions, where cereals are not extensively cultivated. From the oats and rye of the north, to the rice of the hot countries, grains of some kind are staple foods.

“An idea of the importance of cereal foods in the diet may be gathered from the following data, based upon the results obtained in dietary studies with a large number of American families:—Vegetable foods, including flour, bread, and other cereal products, furnished fifty-five per cent of the total food, thirty-nine per cent of the protein, eight per cent of the fat, and ninety-five per cent of the carbohydrates of the diet. The amounts which cereal foods alone supplied were twenty-two per cent of the total food, thirty-one per cent of the protein, seven per cent of the fat and fifty-five per cent of the total carbohydrates—that is, about three-quarters of the vegetable protein, one-half of the carbohydrates, and seven-eighths of the vegetable fat were supplied by the cereals. Oat, rice, and wheat breakfast foods together furnished about two per cent of the total food in protein, one per cent of the total fat, and four per cent of the carbohydrates of the ordinary mixed diet, as shown by the statistics cited. These percentage values are not high in themselves, but it must be remembered that they represent large quantities when we consider the food consumed by a family in a year.”

If one’s work calls for extreme muscular exertion, the cereals may be eaten freely, but if one’s habits are sedentary, and the cereals are used in excess, there is danger of clogging the system with too much glycogen, or converted starch. Indeed, for one whose occupation is indoors and requires little muscular activity, a very little cereal food will suffice; the carbohydrates will be supplied, in sufficient quantity, in vegetables. Mineral matter is supplied in sufficient quantity in almost all classes of foods.

The power of the system to throw off food, over and above the needs of the body, is a wise provision of Nature, because where foods are not supplied in the proper proportions, a more liberal diet enables the system to select such foods as it needs from the abundance.

Cereals and legumes supply nutrients cheaper than any class of foods; therefore a vegetarian diet involves less expense than the mixed diet. Meat, eggs and milk, which usually supply the proteins, are the most expensive foods, and where these are eliminated, a large proportion of proteins should be supplied by the legumes.

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=Wheat.= Perhaps no food is as commonly used as wheat, in its various forms. It is composed of:

First—The nitrogenous or protein compound, chiefly represented in the cerealin and the gluten of the bran.

Second—The carbon extracts,—the largest contributor to the flour.

Third—The fats, occurring chiefly in the germ of the grain.

Fourth—The phosphorous compounds, iron and lime, found in the bran.

The kernel of wheat consists of the bran or covering, which surrounds the white, pulpy mass of starch within. In the lower end of the kernel is the germ.

Flour. In the old time process of making flour the wheat was crushed between stones and then sifted, first, through a sieve, which separated the outer shell of the bran; then through bolting cloth, which separated the white pulp from the inner bran coating. It was not ground as fine as in the present process, thus the gluten, phosphorous, and iron (valuable foods) were, in the old process, nearly all left out of the white flour. The second bran coating, left by the second sifting, was not so coarse as the outer shell but coarser than the inner. Care was not formerly observed in having the grain clean before grinding, the bran containing chaff and dirt, so that it was not used as food but was considered valuable for stock and was called “middlings.”

The modern process of crushing the wheat between steel rollers, crushes it so fine that the white flour of to-day contains more of the protein from the inner coat of the bran than the white flour of the old process; hence, it is more nutritious.