In the selection of food for any individual, the result to be gained from the food must be borne in mind. If one is doing heavy muscular work, more protein to rebuild tissue, as well as more carbohydrates and fats to produce energy, are required than if one’s habits of work are sedentary.
In mental work, in which the brain is continually active, proteins are required to resupply the brain tissue, but the fats and carbohydrates may be lessened. If the brain is sufficiently active to use all of the fuel in brain energy one does not accumulate fat.
In sedentary occupations, which do not call for hard and continuous mental activity, the carbohydrates and fats, if taken in excess, are stored within the system, clogging it and producing torpid liver, constipation, and obesity.
In a study of tables of food values, in making up a dietary, the question should be to provide the largest quantity of nutriment at the lowest cost, with due attention to palatability and variety.
In the selection of meats, for instance, while beef steak may cost twice as much as beef stew, it must be borne in mind that beefsteak contains very little waste, and that it contains a large proportion of albuminoids, or the tissue-building proteins, while, in beef stew, bone and connective tissue predominate. A large proportion of the proteins obtained from the beef stew are gelatinoids and extractives—not the tissue-building albuminoids. (See page [56].)
In comparing the cheaper and the more expensive cuts in the same kind of beefsteak, however, the cheaper cuts often yield quite as much nutriment as the more expensive ones. Round steak is just as nourishing as porterhouse and cheaper, if one considers the greater number of helpings derived from a pound of round steak than from a pound of porterhouse.
For the aged or the invalid, however, the question of preparation will determine the relative economy.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] For a knowledge of the structure and function of the mucous lining of the stomach and intestines, and of the tributary glands, such as the liver and pancreas, which is important to a thorough understanding of digestion, the reader is referred to Let’s Be Healthy, of this series. In this will be found a study of the secretion of digestive juices, the conditions favoring normal secretions, etc.
[6] Hereafter, in speaking of sugar, after it has been absorbed into the blood, the reader will bear in mind that the term refers not only to digested sugar, consumed as such, but also to digested starches (maltose).