These contain less fat, less nitrogenous matter, more water, and more sugar (or starch, which becomes sugar during digestion) than animal food.
Those who advocate the use of flesh food usually do so on the ground that it is more nutritious, contains more nitrogenous material and more fat than vegetable food. So much the worse for the human being, says Nature, when she prepares the food.
But as a matter of practical fact there are no flesh-eaters among us, none who avail themselves of this higher proportion of albuminoids and fat. We all practically admit every day in eating our ordinary English dinner, that this excess of nitrogenous matter and fat is bad; we do so by mixing the meat with that particular vegetable which contains an excess of the carbo-hydrates (starch) with the smallest available quantity of albuminoids and fat. The slice of meat, diluted with the lump of potato, brings the whole down to about the average composition of a fairly-arranged vegetarian repast. When I speak of a vegetarian repast, I do not mean mere cabbages and potatoes, but properly selected, well cooked, nutritious vegetable food. As an example, I will take Count Rumford’s No. 1 soup, already described, without the bread, and in like manner take beef and potatoes without bread. Taking original weights, and assuming that the lump of potato weighed the same as the slice of meat, we get the following composition according to the table given by Pavy, page 410:
| Water | Albumen | Starch | Sugar | Fat | Salts | |
| Lean beef | 72·00 | 19·30 | — | — | 3·60 | 5·10 |
| Potatoes | 75·00 | 2·10 | 18·80 | 3·20 | 0·20 | 0·70 |
| 147·00 | 21·40 | 18·80 | 3·20 | 3·80 | 5·80 | |
| Mean composition of mixture | 73·50 | 10·70 | 9·40 | 1·60 | 1·90 | 2·90 |
Rumford’s soup (without the bread afterwards added) was composed of equal measures of peas and pearl barley, or barley meal, and nearly equal weights. Their percentage composition as stated in the above-named table is as follows:
| Water | Albumen | Starch | Sugar | Fat | Salts | |
| Peas | 15·00 | 23·00 | 55·40 | 2·00 | 2·10 | 2·50 |
| Barley meal | 15·00 | 6·30 | 69·40 | 4·90 | 2·40 | 2·00 |
| 30·00 | 29·30 | 134·80 | 6·90 | 4·50 | 4·50 | |
| Mean composition of mixture | 15·00 | 14·65 | 62·40 | 3·45 | 2·25 | 2·25 |
Here, then, in 100 parts of the material of Rumford’s halfpenny dinner, as compared with the ‘mixed diet,’ we have 40 per cent. more of nitrogenous food, more than six and a half times as much carbo-hydrate in the form of starch, more than double the quantity of sugar, about 17 per cent. more of fat, and only a little less of salts (supplied by the salt which Rumford added). Thus the ‘mixed diet’ falls short in all the costly constituents, and only excels by its abundance of very cheap water.
This analysis supplies the explanation of what has puzzled many inquirers, and encouraged some sneerers at this work of the great scientific philanthropist, viz. that he allowed less than five ounces of solids for each man’s dinner. He did so and found it sufficient, because he was supplying far more nutritious material than beef and potatoes; his five ounces was more satisfactory than a pound of beef and potatoes, three-fourths of which is water, for which water John Bull blindly pays a shilling or more per pound when he buys his prime steak.
Rumford added the water at pump cost, and, by long boiling, caused some of it to unite with the solid materials (by the hydration I have described), and then served the combination in the form of porridge, raising each portion to 19¾ ounces.
I might multiply such examples to prove the fallacy of the prevailing notions concerning the nutritive value of the ‘mixed diet,’ a fallacy which is merely an inherited epidemic, a baseless physical superstition.