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Sago, Nutritive Properties Of

"The sago palm," says Professor Johnston, "is cultivated in many places, but it is the chief support of the inhabitants of Northwestern New Guinea, and of parts of the coast of Africa. The meal is extracted from the pith by rubbing it to powder, and then washing it with water upon a sieve. It is baked by the natives into a kind of bread or hard cake, by putting it for a few minutes into a hot mould. The exact nutritive value of sago has not been chemically ascertained. It has been stated, however, that two and a half pounds of it are enough for a day's sustenance for a healthy full-grown man. And as each tree, when cut down in its seventh year, yields seven hundred pounds of sago-meal, it has been calculated that a single acre of land planted with three hundred trees--one-seventh to be cut down every year--will maintain fourteen men." The pith of the sago palm made into bread probably contains a sufficient quantity of gluten to sustain life; but this is in a great measure washed out in manufacturing the sago of commerce. Sago has been sometimes used as an ingredient of household bread, in the proportion of one part of sago to about three of wheaten flour.