Home Makers' Conference. 337 



Our work on the laundry problem is not yet completed. We hope 

 to offer to the housekeepers of Missouri the best plans for laundry work, 

 considering time and labor, and materials. Any suggestions and ex- 

 periences you may have to offer toward this end will be appreciated. 



The Cornell Eeading-Course for Farmers' Wives has a valuable 

 bulletin No. 3 in the Sanitation Series 1 on The Laundry. 



For cost of a gasoline power laundry we are indebted to the First 

 Annual Keport, State Dairy and Food Commissioner, Missouri, 1907. 



FOOD PRINCIPLES AND THEIR USES IN THE BODY. 



(Mrs. Ivy Harner Selvidge, Columbia, Mo.) 



"Foods are divided into two general classes, the inorganic foods 

 and the organic foods. Inorganic foods are subdivided into water, and 

 the mineral salts. Organic foods are subdivided into proteids, starches 

 and sugars, and fats and oils. The compounds of which the body is 

 made up may be classified in exactly the same way. In the process 

 which food undergoes in preparation for the body, man has some im- 

 portant work to do. Two things may be said to affect food and help 

 get it ready for the body to use. The first is the application of heat 

 to it, either in the process of ripening which is effected by the natural 

 heat of the sun, or by the application of artificial heat in the processes 

 we call cooking. The second important factor in the preparation of 

 food for use in the body is digestion. In order to fully understand 

 the effect of the first it is necessary to know something of the last, 

 that the work of the former may aid the latter process. 



"The alimentary canal is a tube running through the body. It 

 is divided into the mouth, the aesophigus, the stomach, the small intes- 

 tine and the large intestine. Food is taken into the mouth, where it is 

 acted upon mechanically by the teeth, which grind it into small pieces, 

 and the saliva which moistens it and thus prepares it to slip down the 

 small tube to the stomach. The most important action in the mouth, 

 however, is chemical. The saliva, a watery alkaline fluid, is secreted in 

 the mouth by three pairs of glands, the sub-maxillary, the sub-lingual 

 and the parotid. Saliva contains two enzymes, or unorganized fer- 

 ments, which act on certain foods. These enzymes are ptyalin, which 

 changes cooked starch into sugar and sucrase, which changes ordinary 

 commercial sugar into glucose. When either starch or sugar is changed 

 into glucose it is ready to be absorbed by the blood vessels. Ptyalin 

 is not often found in the saliva of children less than nine months old. 



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