Fig. 7 —Good foods for building muscles, blood, and bone.
Body-building Foods.—A person with all the sugar, molasses, starch, butter, and lard he could eat would starve to death in a few weeks because none of these foods would help to build up the dying parts of the body. A large amount of body builder is found in lean meat, eggs, milk, peas, beans, corn meal, and bread. Bread and milk is a good food to make the body grow. If the body takes in more building food than it needs for repairs, it may store it up in the form of fat or burn it to help the body do its work.
The Fuel Foods.—The fuel foods are the sugars, starches, and fats. These are the foods which the body can easily burn to keep it warm and give it power to act. Candy, molasses, or sugar in any form, taken in small quantities, is a good food. Starch, which the body quickly changes to sugar, is a much cheaper food. Meats contain very little starch, but nearly all vegetables contain much starch. Three fourths of corn meal, rice, wheat flour, and soda crackers consists of starch. More than one half of white bread, dried beans, and peas is made of pure starch, and there is much starch in potatoes.
Fat is more abundant in animal than in vegetable food. Castor oil and cotton-seed oil are fats from vegetables. The fat of the cow is called suet or tallow, while the fat of the hog is known as lard. Butter is the fat collected from milk. Cream and eggs contain much fat. When persons eat too much of the sugars, starches, or fats, the body may store them up as fat. For this reason thin persons wishing to gain in flesh eat eggs, nuts, and rich milk.
The Mineral Foods.—The body must have not only lime to help form the bones, but iron, salt, soda, and potash for other parts of the body. All these minerals except salt are found in many of the common foods.
Fig. 8 —Good foods for giving the body power and heat.