Water is one of the most important of the mineral foods because it helps the body use all the other foods. Most people drink too little water to enjoy the best health. The body needs more than two quarts of water every day. There is much water in our foods. More than one half of eggs, meat, and potatoes is made of water, and more than three fourths of tomatoes, green corn, onions, cabbage, and string beans is composed of water. We should drink one quart or more of water daily. It should not be used ice cold, and very little should be taken at meal time.
Fig. 9 —Diagram showing how the drainage from a house with a sick person caused one hundred and twenty cases of typhoid fever at Mount Savage, Maryland.
Water and Health.—One of the common causes of sickness is bad water. Water from shallow wells within a hundred feet of barnyards, pigpens, or other outhouses is usually unsafe to drink. At Newport, Rhode Island, more than eighty persons were made sick with the fever by drinking the water from a well only ten feet deep. The impure water from one spring at Trenton, New Jersey, gave the fever to nearly a hundred persons in one season. At Mount Savage, Maryland, a hundred and twenty persons were made ill by using the water from a spring near a house drain.
Water from rivers and streams running near where many people live is likely to be made impure and is sure to bring sickness and death to some of those who use it. Water from a small stream at Plymouth, Pennsylvania, running past a house occupied by a typhoid patient, gave the fever to over a thousand persons in one month. The water from a small stream at Ithaca, New York, gave the fever to over thirteen hundred people in one season, and an almost equal number caught the fever in a few weeks at Butler, Pennsylvania, by drinking water from a small creek along which some sick persons lived.
Preventing Sickness from Bad Water.—It is better to go thirsty than to drink water which is likely to cause sickness. Any water can be made safe by boiling it one minute. Boiled water is the most healthful kind of water to use. The people of China and Japan seldom use water that has not been boiled.
Many cities using water from rivers run it through a layer of sand and gravel to remove the tiny things that cause so much sickness and death. This makes the water very much purer, but it is not so certain to make the water safe as is boiling it. Bad water makes nearly a quarter of a million of our people sick every year and kills twenty thousand of them.
How much Food does the Body Need?—Most people eat too much. Overeating overworks the stomach, poisons the body, makes one feel lazy, and causes headache. If you chew your food fine and stop eating as soon as hunger is satisfied without tempting the appetite with sweets, you are not likely to overeat.
About one seventh of a pound of building food is needed daily to keep the body in repair, and a quarter of a pound of fat and a pound of starches and sugars are required to help the body do a hard day's work. A half pound of bread, beans, and meat each, a pound of potatoes, a pint of milk, and a quarter of a pound of butter and sugar each, will give a working man all the food he needs for a day.