NOURISHING AND UNSTIMULATING FOOD.
The following presents a list of the articles which are found to be healthful and nourishing, and not stimulating, except as they supply the nourishment needed by the various bodily functions.
The first and most important of these are called the farinaceous substances. Of these, wheat stands at the head, as the most nutritive, safe, and acceptable diet to all classes and in all circumstances. This can be used in the form of bread, every day, through a whole life, without cloying the appetite, and to an extent which can be said of no other food.
Wheat is prepared in several forms, the principal of which are the common Fine Wheat Flour, the Unbolted, or Graham Flour, and Macaroni, Vermicelli, and Cagliari Pastes. The last are flour paste prepared, or cut into various shapes and dried.
Wheat flour is made into bread of two kinds, the fermented, or spongy breads, and the unfermented, or hard breads.
The spongy breads are made by using either yeast, or the combination of an acid and alkali. In yeast bread, the fermentation of the particles of diffused yeast evolve carbonic acid. This expands the flour in a spongy form, in which it is retained by the tenacity of the gluten of the flour, until baking hardens it. Corn meal and some other bread-stuffs cannot be raised thus, because they do not contain gluten sufficient to hold the carbonic acid as it evolves.
When an alkali and acid are used to raise bread, their combination evolves carbonic acid by a more sudden process than the yeast fermentation. The lightness produced by eggs is owing to their adhesive porosity when beaten and mixed with flour and baked.
Bread is also made of rice, rye, Indian meal, and barley. These varieties of bread-stuffs are useful in various ways. In cases when persons are troubled with looseness of bowels, rice bread, rice gruel, and rice water for drink, prevent the necessity of resorting to medicine. In cases where the opposite difficulty exists, a diet of unbolted wheat, or rye mush with salt and molasses will remedy the evil. These articles also can, all of them, be formed into a great variety of combinations that are at once healthful, and acceptable to the palate.
The next class of healthful and unstimulating articles are the amylaceous, or starchy articles of diet. Of these Sago, Tapioca, Arrow Root, and the Lichens, are those in most frequent use. These are nourishing and remarkably easy of digestion. They are very much used for invalids, and for young children when first weaned.
The next most valuable articles of food are the vegetables. Of these the Potato is at once the most healthful, and most universally relished. In the form of Starch, it makes, when cooked, a light and agreeable article for the sick, and is convenient to housekeepers as forming a fine minute pudding to meet an emergency.