Food Guide for War Service at Home / Prepared under the direction of the United States Food Administration in co-operation with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Education, with a preface by Herbert Hoover

by United States Food Administration; Katharine Blunt; Florence Powdermaker; Frances Lucy Swain

THE VALUABLE CONSTITUENTS OF MILK

What gives milk its unique value? It must contain especially valuable substances, since it is an adequate food for the young for several months after birth and is one of the most important constituents of a grown person's diet.

It contains protein of a kind more valuable, especially for growing children, than that of most other foods. Milk protein separates out when milk sours and is the familiar cottage-cheese. Because of it, milk, whole or skim, is a valuable meat substitute. When we drink milk, therefore, we need less meat.

It contains fat. A pint of milk has a little more than half an ounce—the same amount as an ordinary serving of butter. By drinking milk we can save fat as well as meat.

Milk-sugar is also present, more or less like ordinary sugar, but not so sweet. The sugar, the fat, and part of the protein burn in the body, giving the energy needed for the body's activities. A pint gives as much fuel as 4 eggs, or half a pound of meat, or 3 or 4 large slices of bread. Although bread is cheaper fuel than milk, its economy compared with meat or eggs is obvious. The pint of milk costs usually about 7 cents, while the eggs and meat cost at least two or three times as much. The economy of substituting milk for at least part of the meat in the diet is plain. It is the advice of an expert to "let no family of 5 buy meat till it has bought 3 quarts of milk."

But this is not the whole story of milk. Milk is extraordinarily rich in calcium, commonly called lime, necessary for the growth of the bones and teeth and also important in the diet of adults, even though they have stopped growing. No other food has nearly as much. A pint has almost enough calcium for one entire day's supply. It takes 2¼ pounds of carrots to give the same amount, or 7 pounds of white bread or the impossible quantity of 21 pounds of beef! A diet without milk (or cheese) is in great danger of being too low in calcium, especially a meat-and-bread diet without vegetables.

Among the most necessary constituents of milk are the two vitamines. One is present chiefly in the fat and the other in the watery part of the milk. Without milk fat, in whole milk or in butter, we run considerable risk of having too little of the fat-soluble vitamine. The other vitamine is more widely distributed in our foods, so that with our varied diet there is little danger of not getting enough.

Milk, therefore, fills all the needs of the child, except, perhaps, for iron, and is one of the best foods in the diet of grown people. There is no other food that has all the virtues of milk; it therefore has no substitute. "The regular use of milk is the greatest single factor of safety in the human diet."