Fads in Foods

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XI, 15 March 1902, Page 522

Fads in Foods

If a shopkeeper asserted his income to be ten thousand a year, but subsequent inquiry proved that in order to receive this sum he had to pay away five thousand in salaries, freight, and rent of business premises, we should be inclined to regard his statement as —well, as an error of calculation-

The man’s real income is represented by the money he receives less the sum he has to expend in business essentials. In like manner the true value of a food cannot be calculated by its chemical richness, but by that richness less the expenditure on the part of the digestive organs necessary for fitting it for reception into the blood. In other words, the digestibility of a food is a factor that can never be neglected if we are to get a true estimate of its nutritive value. Hence all these plausible tables that represent how such a weight of so and so is more nutritious than a corresponding weight of so and so, may lx- regarded as efforts at fiction. Moreover, owing to their indigestible character, some of the foods, which on paper appear to offer advantages to those who want much for their money, are so unfitted for a delicate stomach, that their consumption may be followed, not by any nutrition whatever, but by severe dyspepsia.

Man, in the course of his evolution, has been fitted for certain foods. Up-.to-date research shows that the dietary best for health is one containing flesh, fruit, and vegetable. Another point worthy of attention is this: the eater should like his food. Meals of unvaried character, which come to be regarded with aversion, do not nourish equally with meals that afford pleasure in the eating. The latter excite a rich flow of the saliva, and induce a gentle ontpourof the gastric juice is aided, fact that worry, or a shock willti;.ml That the mind does act directly on digestion is also shown by the fact that worry, or a shock will impair it.