1906.] DIETETIC VALUE OF FOODS. 275 



anything else but that these unnatural, perverted tastes will fol- 

 low their children through life? But mothers, somehow, do 

 not seem to see the errors of this training or why their children 

 are not physically fitted for great mental strains or efforts, and 

 they only will or can see, when they understand the chemical 

 composition of foods and the full meaning of dietetic values. 

 It is an old adage that tells us " that man is as the food he eats," 

 but the literal meaning of the saying is but little understood. 

 Let us see if we can trace its origin. 



Foods, learned chemists tell us, are composed of elements 

 found in the soil of the earth, which the little rootlets of grow- 

 ing vegetation take unto themselves to thrive and grow on. 

 The kindly hand of nature supplies within its depth everything 

 necessary for the development and growth of plant life, and 

 these elements, compounded in the laboratory of Mother Earth, 

 are given to us as food in the forms of starches, or, as chemi- 

 cally termed, carbohydrates ; as proteids, or nitrogenous com- 

 pounds ; fats and mineral substances. 



In these various food groups we find different elements, the 

 ofiice of some of these elements being to build and repair the 

 tissues of the body. The foods that contain these elements are 

 known as the flesh builders, or the proteids. Another group, the 

 carbohydrates, yield heat and energy, and still another supplies 

 the material from which the bones, teeth, hair, and nails are built. 

 Chemists determine these facts by analyzing foods and studying 

 their effect in the human body. They have also found that 

 the human body is composed of like and similar elements as 

 found in food. These elements are of many and varied kinds 

 as supplied by nature, but I will only name a few of the most 

 important ones. Some of these, you will observ^e, are gases, 

 some are solids, while others are of a mineral nature. Of the 

 gases we have oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. Familiar as 

 we are with the thought that nitrogen and oxygen constitute 

 the air we breathe, we have still to learn that these gases form 

 a part of our foods and likewise form a part of the human 

 body. The gas, or element nitrogen, is found in all nitro- 

 genous foods, these foods being usually classed as the proteids. 

 It is this element in food upon which we depend for strength 

 and muscular development. The gases, hydrogen and oxygen, 

 combined form water. 



In the carbohydrates or starches, and also in the fats, we find 

 the solid carbon, which burns in the human body with great 



