V
Though the consumption of vegetable foods seems to offer a slight disadvantage from the point of view of albuminoid matters, this is not the case touching hydro-carbonated matters and sugars. The vegetable kingdom constitutes the almost exclusive source of these alimentary principles. One cannot indeed take much account of the consumption of the .5-.6 per cent, of glycogen which exists in the animal muscle partaken of under the shape of butcher's meat. There is hardly enough in this for a large eater of between 200 and 250 grammes of meat, to find in hydrocarbonated matters the 1/300 or the 1/400 of the daily ration. Hydrocarbons are necessarily borrowed from the vegetable foods. This is also the case with sugars which do not exist in the animal kingdom in appreciable quantities. It is the same thing with alcohol which is obtained only from the vegetable kingdom.