OUR BABIES.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12519, 22 April 1909, Page 1

OUR BABIES.

By Htgeia. Published under the auspices of the Society for the promotion of the Health of Women and Children. BEEF TEA AND MEAT EXTRACTS. Last week we published the following table in order to give mothers some idea of the relative nutritive values and working powers of the different foods, and drew special attention to the extreme deficiencies in barley water and beef tea respectively. I Table showing {he number of ounces j of sugar, fat, and proteid in 100 ounces (five pints) of various fluids commonly given to babies, and showing also the fuel value per pint of each. i ' , 1 * c 1 ' j ( \ f * (

On the chemical properties of-the extractives of meat we have but scantyJnformation.. . These substances represent the fragments, as it were of broken-down proteid, and are of no use as tissue-builders. . . They are also, incapable of being oxidised in the body, and so are useless as sources of heat or energy. Being neither tissuebuilders nor- energy-producers, they cannot be regarded as foods. Experiment confirms' this, for it was found tha^ rats which fed on four grammes of meat extract daily died quite as soon as other rats which got no food at all, and Jessop quotes a writer who consumed.half a pot of Liebig's Ex- £ tract at a sitting, and yet felt as bun- c gry as ever afterwards, * To do Liebeg justice he recognised this himself. "Meat extract,'* he says B somewhere, "cannot make us strong, c but it makes us aware of our ? strength." We have here introduced 1 the notion that the extractives of meat I act as "stimulants," a view which * has since been frequently maintained. ] It must be admitted, however, that I satisfactory evidence for any belief in i the "stimulating" properties of beef extract is not forthcoming. A "stimulant"must act either on the heart, quickening and' strengthening its action, or upon the central nervous j system, abolishing or lessening fatigue c Now, it has been shown that two • ounces of Liebeg's Extract can be taken at ohe time by a healthy man with- - out the production of any effect other i than slight diarrhoea. Certainly no i increase in the rapidity of force of the s pulse was observed. ... Of course, if the extract be taken, as it usually is. dissolved in hot water, the heart's action may easily be increased, but the sipping of' hot water by itself is quite capable of producing such an effect.

As regards an influence on the nervous system, the evidence is equally unsatisfactory. There is no proof that the extractives of meat act as brain stimulants.

r>r Hutchison then goes on to point Ollt that while f ailing to stirmilate the organism in other directions, extractives do really act as appetisers and promote the secretion of gastric juice ; but, on the other hand, a very large body of the medical profession accepts the emphatic statements of Dr Haig and his school, who contend that there is not even this last foothold left for meat extracts, becau 5 -^ "the primary stimulation is followed later on by depression, which requires further stimulation to remove it." They contend also that the talcing of meat extracts tends to further load us with poisonous waste products already clogging the system owing to our habit of eating more meat than we need.

However, I am prepared to meet people who, having pinned their faith to some one of the "Ox in Teacup" patent nostrums, will fall back on the specious "Statements contained in the advertisements, and I expect to find him saying, "Yes, we quite admit that the old-fashioned Liebig's Extract is no good, but the new Extracts contain food stuff in addition to extractives." Of course they do, but this merely means that the enterprising proprietors resort to some such expedient as drying and grinding to powder some of -the exhausted "beef tea meat," which they mix with the extractives. By this means some of the waste stuff formerly thrown away is now sold at, say, ten shillings a pound, and goes to further swell the already stupendous profits of the millionaire companies. The readiness with which, by means of a new name, the average man or woman is gulled through advertisements into purchasing stale, sterilised, and_spoiled what they can have at a^mefe fraction of the cost fresh andwholesome is one of the most curious evidences of human stupidity; In the present case the ex-planation-and the "moving why"_are so obvious as to be * worth recording. Liebig really believed more, or less in the value of his invention, but alliances between science and money-mak-ing 'must always be regarded with great suspicion. One cannot afford to lose sight of the fact, that when the great Liebig's Extract Company established its works in South America, nearly half a century ago, cattle were being slaughtered by the thousand for their hides and fat alone, so that the new iriventioin gave a value to meat which had until then been mere waste material. Even now the sale of extract of meat at from ten to fifteen shillings a pound is not unprofitable, and we may be sure that so long as money, is to be made no effort will be spared to induce people to continue buying any product, however discredited. Haying -said so much in disparagement of meat extracts, is one bound to assume that at all times, and under all circumstances, beef tea and its allies are necessarily either useless or harmful ? By no means ; only we must cease to seriously record them as foods During some' forms of sickness, small quantities of commercial meat extract, or preferably home-made beef tea, may be used witH advantage, at times, to" stimulate the appetite, and because in common with other such palatable flavouring agents they tend to promote the flow of gastric juice. But there are many conditions of disease |in which meat' extracts may prove i highly injurious, as, for instance, in kidney or liver disease, gout, rheumatism, etc., where they are liable to i further poison to an already poisoned system. The indiscriminate use of meat extracts of any kind for the sick and ailing cannot be too strongly condemned. They , should be regarded al-

most as drugs, to be used sparingly, andjiot without competent advice from a doctor, if available. Last week we quoted Dr Milner i othergill's well-known statement as to the thousands of lives that have been sacrificed to a mistaken idea regarding the food value of beef tea, but on the other hand it should also be cognised that' probably beef tea has saved some lives simply because of the very fact that it does contain little more than pure water. The custom har. been to vastly over-feed many invalids, and the-; giving of water under the name of beef tea (the patient and nurse imagining all the time that it was a nutritious food) has not been without its advantages. CONCLUSION. My. purpose will be served if mothers have been brought to clearly understand that there is as much food in a small wineglassful of milk as in a whole pint of beef tea made from three-quarters of a pound of the best ' beef. • " .

c 3 *J a> ea i g a jg _ft GG"£ fe PL, (x,a Water — Pure Liebig's Ex- ' tract ■ — — Barley water $ — 18 Beef tea or clear soup — lj 35 Sugar of milk solution, made by adding loz of sugar of milk -fco a. j>int> of boiling water S — — IX6 Condensed milk and water, ovainavy 1 strength for babies as recommended — i.e. 1 to |. .14 of water -4 £. $ 137 Skim milk whey 5 — 1 140 Cow's milk and water, equal parts 2J 1| 2 202 Cow's . milk and barley water, equal parts 3 If 2 213 New milk whey 5 1} 1 220 Human or humanised milk 7 41£ 410