Although the digestibility and flavor of meat (and of every other kind of food) affect its nutritive value, these points are in general of far less importance than its composition. Potatoes are not so nutritious as peas, because they contain a smaller amount of fat and flesh-formers; but they are more digestible. Fish contains less solid matter than flesh, and is less nutritious, yet a cut of turbot will be, in general, more easily digested than an equal weight of old beef. The fact is, that digestibility and flavor are only of great importance to dyspeptic persons. In the healthy digestive organs a pound weight of (dry) food of inferior flavor and slow digestibility will be just as useful as the same weight of well-flavored and easily assimilable aliment, provided all other conditions be alike. If the food be eaten with a relish, and tolerated by the stomach, its digestibility will not, except in extreme cases, affect in a very sensible degree its nutritiveness.
Were one question in animal nutrition satisfactorily answered, it would then be comparatively easy to arrange aliments in the order of their nutritive value. That question is—What are the proper relative proportions of the fat-forming and flesh-forming constituents of our food? It is constantly urged, that the food of the Irish peasantry contains an excess of the fat-forming materials in relation to the muscle-forming substances; and the remedy suggested is, that their staple article of food—potatoes—should be supplemented with flesh, peas, and such like substances, in which, it is supposed, the elements of nutrition are more fairly balanced. In potatoes, the proportion of fat-formers (calculated as fat) is about five times as much as that of the flesh-formers; but these principles exist in the same relative proportions in the fat bacon with which the potato-eater loves to supplement his bulky food. In bread we find the proportion of fat-formers to be only 2½ times as much as that of the flesh-formers, whilst, according to Lawes and Gilbert, the edible portion of the carcass of a fat sheep contains 6½ times as much fat as nitrogenous (flesh-forming) compounds. It is evident, then, that meat such as, for example, the beef recently imported from Monte Video, from which the fatty elements of nutrition are almost completely absent, cannot be a suitable adjunct to a farinaceous food.
There is evidence to prove that in the animal food consumed by the population of these countries, the proportion of fatty to nitrogenous matters is greater than in the seeds of cereal and leguminous plants, and but little less than in potatoes. "It would appear to be unquestionable," say Lawes and Gilbert, "therefore, that the influence of our staple animal foods, to supplement our otherwise mainly farinaceous diet, is, on the large scale, to reduce, and not to increase, the relation of the assumed flesh-forming material to the more peculiarly respiratory and fat-forming capacity, so to speak, of the food consumed." It must be remembered, too, that the fat formers are ready formed in animal food, whereas they exist chiefly in the form of starch, gum, sugar, and such-like substances in vegetables. According to theory, 2½ parts of starch are equivalent to, i.e., convertible into, 1 part of fat; but it is not certain whether the force which effects this change is derivable from the 2½ parts of starch, or from the destruction of tissue, or of another portion of food. If there be a tax on the system in order to convert starch into fat, it is evident that 2½ parts of starch, though convertible into, are not equivalent in nutritive value to one part of fat.
It is quite certain that millions of healthy, vigorous men have subsisted for years exclusively on potatoes; but it is no less clear that a diet of meat and potatoes enables the laborer to work harder and longer than if his food were composed solely of potatoes. But we have seen that the relation between the flesh-forming and fat-forming elements is nearly the same in both potatoes and meat; so that the superiority of a meat or mixed diet cannot be chiefly owing, contrary to the generally received opinion, to a greater abundance of flesh-forming materials. As the proportion of flesh-formers to fat-formers is so much greater in wheaten or oaten bread than in potatoes, and as peas and other vegetables rich in nitrogenous compounds are practically found to be an excellent supplement to potatoes, it is probable that the latter may be somewhat relatively deficient in flesh-forming capacity. It is, however, in all probability the great bulk of a potato diet, and its total want of ready formed fat, that render the addition to it of animal food so very desirable. The concentrated state in which the ingredients of flesh exist, the intimate way in which they are intermixed, their agreeable flavor, and their (in general) ready and almost complete digestibility, appear to be the principal points in which a meat diet excels a vegetable regimen. There may be others, which, though less evident, are, perhaps, of equal importance. At all events, the general experience of mankind testifies to the superiority of a mixed animal and vegetable diet over a purely vegetable one.
Is very Fat Meat wholesome?—The enormous and rapidly increasing demand for meat which characterises the food markets of these days, has reacted in a remarkable manner upon the nature of the animals that supply it. Formerly the animals that furnished pork, mutton, and beef, were allowed to attain the age of three years old and upwards before they were considered to be "ripe" for the butcher; but now sheep and pigs are perfectly matured at the early age of one year, and two-year-old oxen furnish a large quota of the "roast beef of old England." The so-called improvement of stock is simply the forcing of them into an unnatural degree of fatness at an early age; and this end is attained by dexterous selection and crossing of breeds, by avoidance of cold, by diminishing as much as possible their muscular activity, and lastly, and chiefly, by over-feeding them with concentrated aliments.
Every one knows that a man so obese as to be unable to walk cannot be in a healthy state; yet many feeders of stock look upon the monstrously fat bulls and cows of cattle show prize celebrity as normal types of the bovine tribe. It requires but little argument to refute so fallacious a notion. No doubt it is desirable to encourage the breeding of those varieties of animals which exhibit the greatest disposition to fatten, and to arrive early at maturity; but the forcing of individual animals into an unnatural state of obesity, except for purely experimental purposes, is a practice which cannot be too strongly deprecated. If breeders contented themselves with handing over to the butcher their huge living blocks of fat, the matter would not perhaps be very serious; but, unfortunately, it is too often the practice to turn them to account as sires and dams. Were I a judge at a cattle show, I certainly should disqualify every extremely fat animal entered for competition amongst the breeding stock. Unless parents are healthy and vigorous, their progeny are almost certain to be unhealthy and weakly; and it is inconceivable that an extremely obese bull and an unnaturally fat cow could be the progenitors of healthy offspring. We should by all means improve our live stock; but we should be careful not to overdo the thing. If we must have gaily-decked ponderous bulls and cows at our fat cattle exhibitions, let us condemn to speedy immolation those unhappy victims to a most absurd fashion; but in the name of common sense let us leave the perpetuation of the species to individuals in a normal state, whose muscles are not replaced by fat, whose hearts are not hypertrophied, and whose lungs are capable of effectively performing the function of respiration.
Mr. Gant, in a small volume[!--23--][23] devoted wholly to the subject, describes the serious functional and structural disarrangements which over-feeding produces in stock. He found the heart of a one-year old Southdown wether, fattened according to the high-pressure system, to be little more than a mass of fat. In several other young, but so-called "matured" sheep, he found more or less fatty degeneration of the heart, and extensively spread disease of the liver and of the lungs. A four-year old Devon heifer, exhibited by the late Prince Consort at a Smithfield show, was found to be in a highly diseased state. It was slaughtered, and of course its flesh sold at a high price as "prize beef," but its internal organs came into Mr. Gant's possession. The substance of both ventricles of the heart had undergone all but complete conversion into fat; one of its muscles was broken up, and many of the fibres of the others were ruptured. In another animal the muscular fibres of the heart had given way to so great an extent that if the thin lining membrane (endocardium) had burst, death would have instantly ensued. The slightest exertion was likely to cause this catastrophe; but, fortunately enough in this case, the animal was not capable of exertion, for though under three years of age, it weighed upwards of 200 stones: this animal had received for some time before its exhibition, the liberal allowance of 21 lbs. of oil-cake (besides other food) per diem. "A pen of three pigs," says Mr. Gant, "belonging to his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, happened to be placed in a favorable light for observation, and I particularly noticed their condition. They lay helpless on their sides, with their noses propped up against each other's backs, as if endeavouring to breathe more easily, but their respiration was loud, suffocating, and at long intervals. Then you heard a short catching snore, which shook the whole body of the animal, and passed with the motion of a wave over its fat surface, which, moreover, felt cold. I thought how much the heart under such circumstances must be laboring to propel the blood through the lungs and throughout the body. The gold medal pigs of Mr. Moreland were in a similar condition, if anything, worse; for they snored and gasped for breath, their mouths being opened, as well as their nostrils dilated, at each inspiration. From a pig we only expect a grunt, but not a snore. These animals, only twelve months and ten days old, were marked 'improved Chilton breed.' They, with their fellows just mentioned, of eleven months and twenty-three days, had early come to grief. Three pigs of the black breed were in a similar state, at seven months three weeks and five days, yet such animals 'the judges highly commended.'"
Dr. Brinton denies the accuracy of several of Mr. Gant's statements relative to the structural changes in the muscles of obese animals; but I do not think that he has succeeded in disproving the principal assertions made by the latter.
There is conclusive evidence to prove that one of the effects of the present mode of fattening beasts is disease of the internal organs of the animals; but it is by no means certain that the flesh of those diseased animals is as unwholesome food as some writers assert it to be. The flesh of an over-fattened animal differs from that of a lean, or moderately fat one, in containing an exceedingly high proportion of fat; but it has not been proved that the fat of prize animals differs from the fat of lean kine, or that it is less wholesome or nutritious. Be the flesh of those exceedingly fat animals unwholesome or not, there are thousands, ay, millions of persons, to whom its greasy quality renders it peculiarly acceptable; and as for those who dislike fat—they do not usually invest their money in the flesh of prize sheep or oxen. At the same time, it must not be understood that all, or even a large proportion of fully matured stock is in a diseased state; though in most of them the vital and muscular powers are undoubtedly exceedingly low.