THE FOOD WE EAT.*
IT is remarkable how often and continuously science has to corroborate the ordinary common-sense of the household in
• rood and the Principles of Dietetics. By Robert' Hutchison. N.D.Edim. M.B.C.P. With Plates and DiftfISZOB. London : Edward Arnold. [16s. net]
the matter of food. Apparently haphazard combinations and mixtures are condescendingly announced by the analyst to be the best possible adjustment of balance, and he himself has to confess with the writer who said that the stomach is the most subtle analyst, that the human stomach is after all the final court of appeal. This is the often expressed opinion of Mr. Hutchison, and the general verdict of those who have seen many theories put into practice, and observed the inevitable swing of the pendulum back to the lessons taught by daily life. Mean- while many a cherished notion has received its death-blow. Fish as a food of the brain-worker must be consigned to the limbo of vanities, though certain forms of fish are the cheapest of all foods, notably the bloater. Oysters and turtle soup are frauds. It would take fourteen Ostend oysters to equal the nourishment of one egg, and two hundred and twenty-three to provide the same amount of nutriment contained in a pound of beef. Salt fish, especially salt fat fish, is the most valuable food for the poorer classes, and whole races in the South of Europe live on the Newfoundland cod. Canned salmon we see at eighteenpence a pound is no more expensive than cod at sixpence. Millions of people live on it, and the North American settler who is not well provided with cash finds it a good substitute and change from flesh-meat at times. Frogs' legs are not of high nutritive value, which need not surprise us. Turtle-soup, from the chemist's point of view, is not worth a tenth of the price paid for it.
Dr. Hutchison falls foul of beef-teas. No thoughtful person ever supposed Liebig was nourishing, but the effect of a cup of Liebig is not to be disputed, and the various flavours and essences, totally devoid of nourishment though they may be, have a distinctly stimulating effect. If they do not act on the nerves, perhaps they act on the system in the same way that the prospect of a good meal acts on the tired man, for we must remember that they contain those very flavours that prepare the stomach for the consumption, say, of. a beef- steak. " Bovril " is one of the best of these preparations, says Dr. Hutchison, as " Par° " is of the "beef-juices." The fatal objection to these preparations alone is that the amount of ex. tractives, salt, &c., prevents their being supphed in quantity sufficient to provide a patient with his daily need of proteid or nitrogenous requirements. It is as stimulants to digestion that these very expensive beef-teas of commerce are valuable. As far as nutrition is concerned, one can prepare at home equally good beef-juice at much less cost, in one instance at a two-hundredth part of the expense of the fashionable article! The white of one egg is equal to three teaspoonfuls of a beef extract. "It is really pathetic," says Dr. Hutchison, "to see poor people in cases of illness paying large sums for so very small a return."
Soups will always hold their own, though we are told half- a-slice of bread contains as much nourishment as a plateful of pea-soup. But soups are admirable vanguards for the solids of a meal, heralds announcing the coming of proteid and carbo-hydrate, and calling on the digestive organs to collect their resources for attack or defence, whichever the case may be. And now we come to the most interesting sub- ject of all,—what does a man want and what is he to eat ? One fact is perfectly obvious, that an immense number of people who do no muscular work at all take in an allowance of food that more than suffices for the requirements of a navvy. The average man doing moderate muscular work requires -28 lb. nitrogenous or proteid; 1-12 lb. carbo-hydrate (sugar, starch) ; and 1 lb. of fat. To meet this Dr. Hutchison quotes a standard dietary of Waller, which he describes as rather liberal, and the raw ingredients of which cost a little more than a shilling. Let us have them in full, that is, translated into meals. Breakfast: two slices of bread-and-butter and two eggs; dinner : a plateful of potato-soup, a large helping of meat with some fat, four moderate-sized potatoes (whatever that may mean, probably as big as a lamp of chalk), and a slice of bread-and-butter; tea : a glass of milk, and two slices of bread-and-butter; and supper; two slices of bread-and- butter and two ounces -a cheese. It is no exaggeration to say that one knows plenty of men who do a very moderate amount of muscular work who double all these except the last, which they treble, at the very least. The diet of a rail. way navvy, with rather more bread, some cabbage, twice as much meat and twice as much fat, and two pints of beer thrown
in, seems more satisfactory. We do not doubt that the standard diet is sufficient for hunters and prospectors, and men pursuing a variety of occupations exist on it, but standard diets are not easy to conform to, and the general practice is to exceed them.
This is the Englishman's habit, and the reasons for it are soon given. He never knows what the weather may have in store for him, and his habit of eating flesh-meat generates energy, and we suppose the consequent waste demands more food. Idle he may be at times mentally, but never physically. He suffers from a perpetual restlessness. "It is not without reason that the more energetic races of the world have been meat-eaters," says Dr. Hutchison. The Americans are large meat-eaters—indeed, so are most of the residents of North America—and the American business man, mechanic, or labourer can do more work in a day than his English contemporary. He cannot keep it up, and is old before his time, but that is another question. The colonial settler, too, with work as bard as a navvy's and continual dangers and risks, no wonder he eats largely of meat, and where he cannot get it he has an admirable substitute in oatmeal and dairy produce, which turn out the energetic Scotchman, perhaps the best of emigrants. Compare a, grass-fed and a corn-fed horse; we can think of no better instance of the stimulating effect of a richer food on the heart and the courage.
The mention of grass brings us to the question of the vegetarian's diet. Dr. Hutchison has scarcely left this individual a leg to stand upon. The strict vegetarian to obtain a living wage of tissue-formers, or proteids, must fill his stomach to its utmost limit three times a day. This means—well, it means the " potato-belly " of the Irish peasant, and it means a fraud on the body physical. It means a low standard of life, of energy, and resistance to disease. Much time and energy are wasted in coping with the amount of water and cellulose of vegetables. Bread, macaroni, and rice are better digested and absorbed than meat and eggs, but only a little better, and peas come a long way behind meat and eggs. Moreover, even peas and lentils, the most nitrogenous of vegetable foods, must be taken in appalling quantities to give a man a decent allowance of "proteid." That even an occasional modified vegetarian diet is scarcely suited to this country, no less a person than the Pope has recognised. For sedentary occupations and literary workers it cannot be defended for a moment. The agricultural labourer, however, obtains his carbo-hydrate for muscular work from vegetables, and the 'large proportion of water they contain transpires through his skin ; he certainly thrives on it. It is a more or less mixed diet, remember. Still, we never associate the idea of energy with the agricultural labourer. The last generation has seen a great change in their diet. An immense number have butcher's meat at least once a week. May not this account for the growing restlessness of the countryman? No one dreams of including the farmer in this catalogue. Most of them, we take it, are unaware that they eat a great deal more than Sandow does.
More important to the Englishman even than his food is his drink, and it is with considerable relief that many of us will hear that alcohol in moderation is an aid to the running of the human machine. It spares the combustion of fat and is itself used up in the body; it is a food ; indeed, an ounce of alcohol furnishes as much fat as an ounce of butter. So that once and for all alcohol is entitled to rank as a food. But its value is dependent on the quantity taken, for if it exceed the proportion absorbed in the body it takes effect as a poison and the percentage of waste rises. The individual may not take it to intoxication, but his tissues suffer, and his brain, that most delicate and highly organised tissue, suffers most of all. To this degeneration "the motor centres are less resistant than the sensory." This also we knew before; nothing is more striking than the cunning and the caution of the drunkard. "I think, too," says the Doctor, "that one can recognise in the habitual alcoholic -a. certain degree of paralysis of. the moral perceptions, and in special a loss of the sense • of truth."
How much ought a self-respecting man to take ? Here comes the crux; for two very important factors, personal idiosyncrasy and the dilution of alcohol, modify the fact that experiment seems to limit the amount of oxidisable alcohol to one and a half ounces a day. The standard limit is appar- ently more hopelessly left behind than the standard diet is. Dr. Hutchison lays emphasis on the large variation between individuals, "which does not seem to be connected with any determinable peculiarity of physical organisation." Alluding to the" three-bottle men," he says: "One is almost tempted to think that the power of our tissues to oxidise alcohol has actually undergone a decline."
The notion that "fuse! oil" is the deleterious agent in bad and unmellowed spirits is exploded. A volatile oil is sus- pected, but it is only fair to hold it innocent till it is proved guilty. Old sherry our author places next to old cognac as a restorative in brain and heart exhaustion, as it develops with age nearly as large a proportion of volatile ethers. Dr. Hutchison is a firm believer in old sherry and bottled stout, and quotes an authority who declares he scarcely ever met any one who could withstand the soporific effects of bottled stout. "It is far better than opium and produces a more nearly natural sleep." It is even suggested that it should be given to those liable to attacks of homicidal mania.
A safe allowance of wine for a sedentary individual, if a bottle of claret contains two fluid ounces of alcohol, would be half a bottle. This is in proportion to their acidity and strength; a whole bottle would be enough for an active man. An imperial pint of bottled ale supplies this allowance very nearly. The use and effect of wines are of course complicated by the action of the ethers ; all, in fact, that gives wine its testhetic value. Wines retard digestion, both in the mouth and in the stomach, more than spirits and water of the same alcoholic strength. Gastric digestion, however, is not so much affected as salivary digestion. Dr. Hutchison has a good word for champagne, its mechanical action neutralising its retard- ing of the digestion. Medicated wines and all their relatives he abhors, and he gives very good reasons for banning them. Beer drinkers place a heavy tax on their hearts, and in Bavaria there is such a complaint as a "beer-heart." Now, though beer is the best of all alcoholic liquors viewed as a food, and scarcely retards digestion at all, nay, even assists it, the alcohol in it is an expensive food, even in Bavaria, costing eight times as much as bread.
We search in vain and without hope through the pages of the Doctor's able and comprehensive study of food for any golden rules of diet. Frivolous conversation as an after- dinner amusement is a sound maxim. This we knew. Be careful of your diet as you grow into middle age, for the more rotund you become the faster will you roll down the hill of life. So says the Doctor. Are you sleepless and nervous ? drink bottled stout. It is better to eat too much than too little, yet always remember that you are probably eating enough for two. Do not try to live on bread and water for a month, or for a fortnight on "Old Tom." Keep your fortified wines for special occasions, not as a running accompaniment to meals. Do not be led away by wholemeal bread and cocoa, good as they are. If you think you can live on cocoa, prepare to drink seventy-five breakfast-cups of it a day, and fancy yourself another Marquise de Brinvilliers. Avoid "high teas" when much meat is eaten, says the Doctor. You are not com- pelled to eat much meat, however, and it seems to us that a " high tea" with a little meat is better than a dinner with much meat and all sorts of rebellious liquors thrown in. That way lies gout. Millions of Englishmen have tea with every meal, and would feel very miserable without it.
Dr. Hutchison regards maize as a much-neglected food. Certainly our poorer classes little know what they miss. It is only with the greatest difficulty they can be persuaded to take oatmeal. We have heard objections to the use of maize 'n large quantities. By the by, a propos of the theory of obtaining phosphorus for the brain from fishes, is it not a fact that patients suffering from loss of thyroid gland and subsequent imbecility can remedy the loss of the missing substance by eating the powdered gland P Our readers will find this most suggestive book not only intensely interesting, but amusing. A man of forty who reads it and still goes his way unheeding deserves to be called something uncomplimentary.
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