Oatmeal (Robinson’s for choice) is not adapted for making bread, but forms an excellent porridge—say 2 handfuls coarse oatmeal, 1½ pint water, well mixed, boiled ½ hour, and eaten with milk and treacle or brown sugar. The same may be said of Robinson’s Patent barley, which is wonderfully nutritious and adapted to youthful stomachs, besides being excellent in puddings (Keen, Robinson, and Co. are the makers).
Maize contains invaluable ingredients, and the preparation known as Brown and Polson’s corn-flour cannot be too extensively used, especially in custards and blancmanges.
Salt.—The Lancet publishes the following:—“We have received from a correspondent a letter making some inquiries into the use of salt, and we are given to understand that among other follies of the day some indiscreet persons are objecting to the use of salt, and propose to do without it. Nothing could be more absurd. Common salt is the most widely distributed substance in the body; it exists in every fluid and in every solid; and not only is it everywhere present, but in almost every part it constitutes the largest portion of the ash when any tissue is burnt. In particular it is a constant constituent of the blood, and it maintains in it a proportion that is almost wholly independent of the quantity that is consumed with the food. The blood will take up so much and no more, however much we may take with our food; and on the other hand, if none be given, the blood parts with its natural quantity slowly and unwillingly. Under ordinary circumstances a healthy man loses daily about twelve grains by one channel or the other, and if he is to maintain his health that quantity must be introduced. Common salt is of immense importance in the processes ministering to the nutrition of the body, for not only is it the chief salt in the gastric juice, and essential for the formation of bile, and may hence be reasonably regarded as of high value in digestion, but it is an important agent in promoting the processes of diffusion, and therefore of absorption. Direct experiment has shown that it promotes the decomposition of albumen in the body, acting probably by increasing the activity of the transmission of fluids from cell to cell. Nothing can demonstrate its value better than the fact that if albumen without salt is introduced into the intestine of an animal no portion of it is absorbed while it all quickly disappears if salt be added. If any further evidence were required it would be found in the powerful instinct which impels animals to obtain salt. Buffaloes will travel for miles to reach a “salt-lick”; and the value of salt in improving the nutrition and the aspect of horses and cattle is well known to every farmer. The popular notion that the use of salt prevents the development of worms in the intestine has a foundation in fact, for salt is fatal to the small threadworms, and prevents their reproduction by improving the general tone and the character of the secretions of the alimentary canal. The conclusion therefore is obvious that salt, being wholesome, and indeed necessary, should be taken in moderate quantities, and that abstention from it is likely to be injurious.”
Weather.—The weather should govern our diet as much as it does our clothing. In cold weather we require to enrich our blood and fatten our bodies. We should then eat heartily of substantial food and drink milk and cocoa. In hot weather, “the lightest possible food should be taken, and that in moderation. Very little tea or coffee, plenty of milk, with fish, and but little meat, and that well cooked, and a moderate indulgence in iced drinks are indicated. Spirits and heavy wines are, of course, interdicted. It should be known that frequent and excessive thirst is often aggravated by an injudicious consumption of ice. Such extreme thirst will often be immediately allayed by hot drinks, a fact which has been often verified. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that over-feeding and over-drinking (of any fluid whatever) are most pernicious, especially either before or after prolonged or considerable exertion. The principal meal of the day should be taken at sunset.” (Lancet.)
Lightness is the first essential alike in the food and drink taken in warm weather. There is then less work to be done, less waste of tissue, less need of the pre-eminently muscle-forming and heat-producing substances, meat and bread; and fruit, as being both palatable and easily obtainable, is much in use. Its advantages are that it provides a seasonable change of diet, light and wholesome if well chosen, and a palatable tonic and stimulant of digestion with aperient properties. (Brit. Med. Jour.)
Anti-fat Diet.—There is inconceivable folly in the fear of fatness. We do not for a moment deny that it is possible the organism may be too heavily packed with adipose tissue, and that the action of its several parts may be hampered by this encumbrance, while, as a whole, it is needlessly burdened; but this is a totally different matter from the fatness against which the fears of the multitude are for the most part unreasonably directed. There is not the least physiological connection between the accumulation of fat and fatty degeneration. As a matter of fact, what is known as “fatty degeneration” occurs more frequently in those who are lean than in those who are “fat” in a popular sense. It is therefore a misconception to suppose that fatness is in itself a disease. It only becomes morbid when, by mechanical pressure, fat impedes the functions of the organs, or by weight it unduly burdens the body so as to exhaust the strength or make too large a demand on the resources of force and vitality. Unfortunately, the true nature of the objections to fatness are not explained, and misconception is rather confirmed than removed by the prevailing mode of urging arguments against “fat” and in favour of remedies by which it is proposed to get rid of it. Practically speaking, it is idle to suppose that fatness can be certainly prevented by dieting. There are many ways of fat-making, and those persons who have a tendency to its production will make fat however they are fed—in truth, almost as rapidly on one class of diet as on another. There are idiosyncrasies which may in a limited number of instances be taken advantage of to check the tendency to form fat, but these specialties of chemico-nutritive function are by no means common; and, speaking generally, it must be said that, except by starving the body as a whole, fatness cannot be prevented. The exceptions to this rule are chiefly such as may be explained on the principle of a special tissue appetite. Thus, for example, a man whose muscular system has been healthily developed somewhat in excess of the other parts of his organism may have what might be called a muscular-tissue appetite of such voracity that it will, so to say, seize upon the bulk of the nutriment supplied to the blood, and make muscle regardless of what may be left for the nutrition of nerves, &c. Such a person will lose fat without growing thin, so far as muscle is concerned, by a mere reduction of diet, without reference to the kind of food cut off, so that the latter do not chance to be essential to muscle nutrition. In the same way, though with different results, a “nervous” person, in the popular sense—that is, an individual whose nervous system is in perpetual activity, working incessantly and feeding voraciously—may consume so much of the food supplied for the body as a whole that only nervous tissue is nourished, and the rest of the body languishes. This is an instance of growing thin while feeding well, and it is the converse of the process by which, in another class of persons, growth of muscle persists in spite of a reduced diet. There are, in this way, persons whose specialty it is to make adipose tissue, and they will wax fat even when muscles, nerves, and the higher organisation are relatively in a condition approaching starvation. These and a score of other matters have to be taken into account when calculating the probabilities—or rather the improbabilities—of success in the endeavour to diminish the fatness of any individual by a system of dieting. As regards the use of drugs against fats, setting aside such obvious modes as robbing the blood of its proper nutriment by purging and nauseating, we do not believe it is practicable to prevent the formation of adipose tissue or even to promote an elimination of fat by the use of medicines, unless it be by correcting some error in the chemico-vital processes of the organic economy, to which a particular remedy may, as a temporary expedient in here and there a suitable case, be intelligently directed. Measures against fatness are, from the very necessities of the enterprise and the conditions under which it must be carried out in the great majority of instances, predestined to failure. It would save a deal of disappointment, and a great many incidental injuries to health might be avoided, if these facts could be more generally understood; and we think medical practitioners generally may be fairly asked to state and explain them. (Lancet.)
Diet for Night-work.—For night-workers, the best plan includes a hearty breakfast when they rise, which is generally between 12 and 3 o’clock; some outdoor exercise and relaxation should precede a good dinner, partaken between 6 and 9 o’clock at night, before beginning work. If the work is to continue until 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, a light but nutritious repast should be eaten shortly after midnight, in order to fortify the system for labour during the hours immediately following, when the vital powers are most enfeebled. When the work is done, and before retiring, a very simple lunch should be taken in the form of good hot broth or beef tea, or a glass of light wine and a couple of biscuits. This will generally ensure sleep by withdrawing blood from the brain, where it has been concentrated by mental effort. In ordinary cases of sleeplessness, not confirmed by long-continued habit, a light meal of this kind will generally prove a remedy.
Diet for Children.—The great mortality of infants in this country is due to improper feeding. The following simple rules should be attended to. If the child can be nursed by the mother, give it nothing else for six months. If it cannot be so reared, give 1-1½ pint of good milk every day for the first 6 months, and 1½-2½ pints, with the addition of barley-water, or a teaspoonful or two of corn flour, till a year old. Take care that the milk is good and the bottles clean. As it gets its teeth, give it small quantities of more solid food, but do not indulge it in everything that comes to table. Growing children require a due proportion of meat.
With regard to condensed milk, it contains much less flesh-forming material than is generally supposed. Taking four per cent. for cow’s milk as a fair average, the directions on the can, if followed out, give unexpected results. For children’s use, we are told to dilute the condensed milk with 4 or 5 parts of water. Taking the lowest figure, we should then have 5 parts of diluted condensed milk which, according to Dr. Stutzer, would only contain 1·76 per cent. of flesh-formers, instead of 4 per cent., while the milk sugar would be increased from 4·5 to 10·85 per cent. We know that woman’s milk contains more sugar than cow’s, but still not in the above surprising proportions. Now that so much canned milk is used for infants brought up by hand, it becomes a question how far mothers who cannot suckle their children are responsible for the health and even lives of their children by giving them milk from the tin instead of that from the living animal.
Diet for underfed Subjects.—The following remarks are derived from Dr. Hodge’s essay before referred to.