Value of meat as a food
Meat is one of the most important articles of our diet. It furnishes essential materials for building cells, and it furnishes fat for making heat and power in the body.
Fig. 9. A double menace to health; the slaughterhouse is dirty, and the filth is drained into a stream.
Characteristics of good meat
Since meat is so important an article of food, we should be very careful to see that it is handled in a way to keep it always perfectly clean. We should make sure that it comes from animals absolutely free from any kind of disease, and that no germs have been allowed to develop poisons in it.
How meat may be kept clean
While people know that they ought to pay attention to these things, as a matter of fact they do not do it. They take very little interest in the way the meat that they are to eat is handled, and very few ever go to the slaughterhouse or into the back room of the butcher shop to see whether things are kept clean or not. Some people say, "Oh, we do not like to go there because it is such a horrid place." If these places were kept clean, as they should be, they would not be "horrid." And if the people who buy the meat would occasionally visit them, these places would be kept clean.
Fig. 10. Properly displayed foods, protected from handling and from dirt and flies.