The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

9-6 EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD.

To make this statement plain, suppose we have a
meal composed of roast beef, rare, with potatoes and
dish gravy, and as much of unbolted wheat bread, or
rye and Indian, and fruits, and cheese, and perhaps,
if the beef be lean, or with green vegetables, butter
or fat pork, to give them their heating principles. Of
such a meal the appetite would be satisfied with just
the amount of food necessary to supply either the heating or the muscle-making principles, and they would
be taken in the right proportions.
But suppose, instead, we tried to satisfy the appetite
with a meal composed of fried fat pork and potatoes,
fine wheat bread and butter, griddle-cakes and siruparticles almost entirely destitute of food for muscle
or brain. When the stomach was filled with these
articles, there would still be a demand for the
nitrates or phosphates, and we should still crave
some article to supply the deficiency, and all the
carbonates above those which the system required
would be wasted.
On the other hand, if we ate only lean meat, or fish,
and green vegetables and fruits, which are deficient in
carbonates, we should require a quantity of these articles in proportion to that deficiency, or the lungs would
not be supplied with fuel sufficient to "run the machine." But in Boston, and probably in all American
cities, a large part of the expenses of the table are for
butter, superfine flour, and sugar, neither of which contains enough of the muscle or brain-feeding element
to sustain life over fifty days, as has been proved by