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Food Values and Adulterations: Department

A series of careful experiments under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture have led to the conclusion that cheese, when used by normal healthy persons in sufficient quantity to be a substitute for meat, is not indigestible. Nor does it seem to cause any digestive disturbances.

While there are persons with whom cheese does not agree, the same is true with many other articles of diet.

If it should have a tendency to produce constipation, this may be offset by adding fruits and fruit juices to the diet. Bread and cheese taken with fruit is a thoroughly well balanced and very economical ration. A number of suggestive bills of fare and recipes for the use of cheese, prepared under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture, are given elsewhere. (See Appendix.) SOURCES OF CARBOHYDRATES Sugar as Food. -Sugar, on account of its pleasant flavor and high nutritive value, is among the most deservedly popular of all food products. It occurs in several forms of which the best known are cane sugar -the ordinary granulated sugar and other well known kinds used in cookery-glucose, made from starch; milk sugar, grape sugar and honey. Sugar is also produced in large quantities from the sugar beet. And maple sugar is an important article of commerce. Roughly speaking, sugar is the equivalent of starch after the latter has been digested and made soluble. Thus a mealy potato is very nearly akin to sugar, but-like all forms of starchy food-it must be turned into a kind of sugar by the digestive juices before it can be absorbed by the system. This process is started by a ferment contained in the saliva. It is continued and completed in the intestine. Sugar in proper quantity is very fully and rapidly digestible and is one of the most important sources of heat and energy in the diet. For this reason men employed at hard labor-especially in cold climates, as lumbermen in the northern forests-use large quantities of sugar in the form of molasses. And, for similar reasons, it is relished by children to supply the energy required by their active habits.