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

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ANALYSIS OF BEEF.

best relished, and, with very rare exceptions, nothing
thus selected and properly cooked will ever prove indigestible or unwholesome, and these exceptions will
only be found where the digestive organs are deranged
by previous imprudence.
Animal Food.
The flesh of animals, fat and lean together, contains,
as does a grain of wheat, every one of the fourteen
elements of which the human system is composed, but
not in the same proportions, or in the same proximate
principles.
In one hundred parts of the carcass of an ox, of
average fatness, are of food for brains, &c., about 4;
for muscles and tissues, 15; for heat and fat, 30;
water, 50. In wheat, for brains, &c., about 2; for
muscles and tissues, average 14; for heat and fat 70;
water, 14.
The muscle-making principles in wheat are gluten
and albumen, while in beef they are fibrin and albumen; but each of these principles so perfectly agrees in
chemical composition as to be considered mere modifications of the same substance, and being dried, contains precisely the same elements and in the same proportions.
The heat and fat-producing principles in wheat are
sugar and starch, principally, starch, with very little
fat, while in beef it is fat only; and as fat produces
two and a half times as much heat as sugar or starch,
and beef contains more than three times as much water