Many cities have established such stations, where people can buy, for a cent or two, a drink that is far better than soda water or any other beverage.
Their chief value lies in the hot water they contain, which has been sterilized by boiling, while its heat assists the process of digestion; and in the fact that their agreeable taste sometimes gives us an appetite and enables us to eat more of less highly flavored foods, like bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice, than we would without them. They are, also, usually taken with cream, or milk, or sugar, which are real foods and bring their fuel value up to about half that of skimmed milk. So far as they stimulate the appetite and increase the amount of food eaten, they are beneficial; but when taken as a substitute for real food, they are most injurious. A cup of coffee, for instance, makes a very poor breakfast to start the day on; for although it gives you a comforting sense of having eaten something warm and satisfying, it contains very little real food, and soon leaves you feeling empty and tired; just as an engine would give out if you put a handful of shavings into its fire-box, and expected it to do four hours' work on them.
The most disturbing effects of tea and coffee upon the digestion are due to the tannin which they contain if boiled too long, especially in the case of tea. This tannin, fortunately, will not dissolve in water except by prolonged boiling or steeping; so that if tea is made by pouring boiling water over the tea leaves and pouring it off again as soon as it has reached the desired strength and flavor, and coffee by being just brought to a boil and then not allowed to stand more than ten or fifteen minutes before use, no injurious amounts of tannin will be found in them. Tea, made by prolonged stewing on the back of the stove, owes its bitter, puckery taste to tannin, and is better suited for tanning leather than for putting into the human stomach.
Boys and girls up to fifteen or sixteen years of age are much better off without tea, coffee, or cocoa; for they need no artificial stimulants to their appetites, while at the same time their nervous systems are more liable to injury from the harmful effects of over-stimulation. If the beverages are taken at all, they should be taken very weak, and with plenty of milk and cream as well as sugar.
ALCOHOL
How Alcohol is Made. The most dangerous addition that man has ever made to the water which he drinks is alcohol. It is made by the action of the yeast plant on wet sugar or starch—a process called fermentation. Usually the sugar or starch is in the form of the juice of fruits; or is a pulp, or mash, made from crushed grains like barley, corn, or rye. As the spores of this yeast plant are floating about almost everywhere in the air, all that is usually necessary is to let some fruit juice or grain pulp stand at moderate warmth, exposed to the air, when it will begin to "sour," or ferment.
Wine. When the yeast plant is set to work in a tub or vat of grape juice, it attacks the fruit sugar contained in the juice, and splits it up into alcohol and carbon dioxid, so that the juice becomes bubbly and frothy from the gas. When from seven to fifteen per cent of alcohol has been produced, the liquid is called wine. It contains, besides alcohol, some unchanged fruit sugar, fruit acids, and some other products of fermentation (known as ethers and aldehydes), which give each kind of wine its special flavor.
Beer, Ale, and Cider. If the yeast germ be set to work in a pulp or mash of crushed barley or wheat, the starch of which has been partly turned into sugar by malting, it breaks up the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxid. When it has brewed enough of the starch to produce somewhere from four to eight per cent of alcohol, then the liquid, which still contains about three or four per cent of a starch-sugar called maltose, is called beer, or ale. It is usually flavored with hops to give it a bitter taste and make it keep better. If the same process be carried out in apple juice, we get the well known hard cider with its biting taste.
Whiskey, Brandy, and Rum. When left to itself, the process of fermentation in most of these sugary or starchy liquids will come to a standstill after a while, because the alcohol, when it reaches a certain strength in the liquid, is, like all other toxins, or poisons produced by germs, a poison also to the germ that produces it. The yeast-bacteria probably produce alcohol as a poison to kill off other germs which compete with them for their share of the sugar or starch. So even the origin of this curious drug-food shows its harmful character. We should hardly pick out the poison produced by one germ to kill another germ as likely to make a useful and wholesome food.
