FOOD CONSUMED—ONE WEEK
| FAMILY No. 1 | FAMILY No. 2 | ||
| 20 loaves of bread | $ 1.00 | 15 lb. flour, bread home-made (skim milk used) | $ 0.45 |
| 10 to 12 lb. loin steak or meat similar cost | 2.00 | Yeast, shortening, and skim milk | 0.10 |
| 20 to 25 lb. rib roast or similar meat | 4.40 | 10 lb. steak (round, Hamburger and some loin) | 1.50 |
| 4 lb. high-priced cereal breakfast food, 20¢ | 0.80 | 10 lb. other meats, boiling pieces, rump roast, etc. | 1.00 |
| Cake and pastry purchased | 3.00 | 5 lb. cheese, 16¢ | 0.80 |
| 8 lb. butter, 30¢ | 2.40 | 5 lb. oatmeal (bulk) | 0.15 |
| Tea, coffee, spices, etc. | 0.75 | 5 lb. beans | 0.25 |
| Mushrooms | 0.75 | Home-made cake and pastry | 1.00 |
| Celery | 1.00 | 6 lb. butter, 30¢ | 1.80 |
| Oranges | 2.00 | 3 lb. home-made shortening | 0.25 |
| Potatoes | 0.25 | Tea, coffee, and spices | 0.40 |
| Miscellaneous canned goods | 2.00 | Apples | 0.50 |
| Milk | 0.50 | Prunes | 0.25 |
| Miscellaneous foods | 2.00 | Potatoes | 0.25 |
| 3 doz. eggs | 0.60 | Milk | 1.00 |
| Miscellaneous foods | 1.00 | ||
| 3 doz. eggs | 0.60 | ||
| $23.45 | $11.30 | ||
"The tables show that one family spends over twice as much in the purchase of foods as the other family, and yet the one whose food costs the less actually secures the larger amount of nutritive material and is better fed than the family where more money is expended."—From Human Foods, Snyder.
The Source of the Different Foods. All of our food comes from either the plant world or the animal world. Broadly speaking, plants furnish the carbohydrates, that is, starch and sugar; animals furnish the fats and proteids. But although vegetable foods yield carbohydrates mainly, some of them, like beans and peas, contain large quantities of protein and can be substituted for meat without disadvantage to the body. Other plant products, such as nuts, have fat as their most abundant food constituent. The peanut, for example, contains 43% of fat, 30% of proteids, and only 17% of carbohydrates; the Brazil nut has 65% of fat, 17% of proteids, and only 9% of carbohydrates. Nuts make a good meat substitute, and since they contain a fair amount of carbohydrates besides the fats and proteins, they supply all of the essential food constituents and form a well-balanced food.
CHAPTER VI
WATER
65. Destructive Action of Water. The action of water in stream and sea, in springs and wells, is evident to all; but the activity of ground water—that is, rain water which sinks into the soil and remains there—is little known in general. The real activity of ground water is due to its great solvent power; every time we put sugar into tea or soap into water we are using water as a solvent. When rain falls, it dissolves substances floating in the atmosphere, and when it sinks into the ground and becomes ground water, it dissolves material out of the rock which it encounters (Fig. 30). We know that water contains some mineral matter, because kettles in which water is boiled acquire in a short time a crust or coating on the inside. This crust is due to the accumulation in the kettle of mineral matter which was in solution in the water, but which was left behind when the water evaporated. (See Section 25.)
