Part 7

Manual laborers require more fat for energy than do people whose habits are sedentary. School children, or children who play hard, should have sufficient fat, and where fats are withheld, sugar should be freely supplied.

The supply of fat stored in the body depends upon the quantity consumed with the food, upon the quantity used up in heat and energy, in muscular exercise, or in mental force. The quantity thus consumed depends somewhat upon the condition of the nerves. If the nerves are weak, they do not properly direct digestion and assimilation and less fat is consumed in the digestive and assimilative processes.

=Butter and Cream.= The fat present in milk depends, of course, upon the quality of the milk. There is as much butter fat in a glass of fresh Jersey milk as in a glass of cream, which has been separated, by machinery, from the milk of some other cows. The cream from some Jersey cows is almost all butter. Skimmed milk contains very little fat. If milk is drunk by the adult, as a means of storing up more fat within the body, the cream should be stirred into it.

=The Fat of Meat= should be thoroughly cooked and cooked with moisture. All meats in the process of baking or frying should be covered, in order to retain the moisture. To make fat easily digestible it should be well masticated.

Bacon, if fully immersed in its own grease, in the process of frying, is a common source of fat and is easily digested.

=Cod Liver Oil= from the liver of the codfish, is more easily absorbed and assimilated than any other fat. The odor is not pleasant and a little lemon juice, salt, baking soda, or any substance for pungency and flavor, may be added to make it palatable. The pure oil taken in this way is perhaps preferable to the prepared emulsions. One has the advantage, at least, of knowing what he is taking.

=Olive Oil= is crushed from ripe olives. It is often used where cod liver oil is prescribed, because more palatable. Cotton seed oil is often substituted or mixed with the cheaper grades of olive oil. It is wholesome, if fresh, but has not the pleasing flavor of the olive.

Many take olive oil for the purpose of rounding out the figure with fat. If the system will assimilate fat, taken in quantities, the fat may be stored up, but, as a rule, one is underweight because of a failure to assimilate the regular diet and the overloading with fat would not cause a better assimilation.

Olive oil in moderation is a good food where much heat and energy are expended, but if ones occupation is sedentary, much fat is not required.

=Nut Oils= are good, but, with the exception of peanut butter, are not often used.

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The sugars are cane and beet sugar, maple sugar, and glucose.

All sugars are carbohydrates,—carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen,—the oxygen and hydrogen being in the same proportions as in water, (two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen), the difference is that the carbon is missing from the water.

Sugar is said to consist of about ninety-five per cent nutritive value.

=Glucose= is made by converting the starch in corn into sugar. It is pure, wholesome, and cheap, and, for this reason, it is often used to dilute other sugars. It is not as sweet as other sugars, and it ferments more readily. Many of the syrups on the market are made from it.

The common, granulated sugars are made from sugar cane or beets; beet sugar is becoming more generally used.

Brown sugar is granulated sugar in the early stages of refinement.

Maple sugar is obtained by boiling down the sap of the maple tree. It is often adulterated with other sugars or with glucose, because they are cheaper. This adulteration does not make it unwholesome, but when mixed with these it loses its distinct, maple taste and is more mild.

Before sugar can be used by the human system, it is changed into grape sugar, or dextrose, (another form of sugar) by a ferment in the small intestine called lactose. Milk sugar needs less chemical change than other sugars and is taken almost at once into the circulation.

When an excess of sugar is consumed, it is stored within the body as glycogen, until required.

Sugar is perhaps a better food than starch, because less force is required for its digestion and it is easily assimilated, being more readily converted into dextrose than are starches. Moreover it furnishes the needed heat and energy to organisms that have no power to digest starch. Milk sugar is a part of the natural food for the infant, because the infant has not developed the ferment necessary for starch digestion.

Sugar may be oxidized within a few minutes after eating, and, for this reason, it is eaten by those who require to use an undue amount of muscular strength. It yields heat and energy within thirty minutes after eating and, in times of great exertion or exhausting labor, the rapidity with which it is assimilated gives it advantage over starch. Used in limited quantities, therefore, according to the muscular or brain power exercised, sugar is one of the best foods for the production of energy. Where much sugar is eaten less starch is required.

It is also said to prevent fatigue, a man being able to do seventy-five per cent more muscular work with less fatigue after consuming about seventeen and one-half ounces of sugar dissolved in pure water.

It might be inferred from the above, that starches could be discarded and replaced by sugars, but a small quantity of sugar soon surfeits the appetite and if the foods were confined to those with a surplus of sugars, sufficient food would not be eaten for the needs of the body. This lack of appetite, occasioned by an excess of sugars, is due, partly, to the fact that the gastric juice is not secreted as freely when there is much sugar in the stomach.

Because of the slower secretion of gastric juice and the surfeit of the appetite, sweetened foods are not used at the beginning of a meal, and, while a moderate amount of sugar is desirable, a surfeit is to be deplored.

While sugar is not converted into fat, it is so readily oxidized and thus supplies heat and energy so promptly that the starches and fats are not called upon until the latent energy in the sugar is used. Those who wish to reduce in flesh should eat it sparingly that the starches and fats may be called upon to furnish energy, but sugar should be as freely used as the system can handle it, by those who wish to build up in flesh.

Broadly speaking, about one-fourth of a pound of sugar, daily, in connection with other foods, is well utilized by the system, the quantity depending upon whether one leads an active or a sedentary life.

Candy is often made from glucose instead of molasses or cane sugar, and while glucose is wholesome, it undergoes fermentation readily. Much candy, unless one is actively exercising, tends to indigestion.