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[37] CHEMICAL COMPOSITION AND VALUE OF FISH FOR FOOD. 267 
CHEAP versus DEAR FOOD. 
These figures differ widely from the market values. But we pay for 
our foods according to, not their value for nourishing our bodies, but 
their abundance and their agreeableness to our palates. 
As was stated in the introduction to this report, taking the samples of 
fish at their retail prices inthe Middletown markets, the total edible solids 
in striped bass came to about $2.30 per pound, while in the Connecticut 
River shad, whose price was very low, we bought nutritive material at 
44 cents per pound. The cost of the nutritive material in one sample 
of halibut was 57 cents, and in the other $1.45 per pound, though both 
were bought in the same place, at the same price, 15 cents per pound, 
gross weight. 
As I have said, to the man whose income will permit him to eat what 
he likes regardless of cost, it makes very little difference how much he 
pays for the albuminoids and fats of his food, but it does make a differ- 
ence to people of small means, and the knowledge that just study of 
these matters will bring, when obtained and diffused among the people, 
cannot fail to do great good. 
The cook-books and newspapers have occasionally something to say 
upon these points, but their statements are apt to be as vague and far 
from the truth as in the lack of authoritative information they might 
be expected to be. Certain it is that we need to know more about these 
things, and that proper investigations may help us toward that knowl- 
edge. 
FISH AS BRAIN FOOD. 
Before closing I ought, perhaps, to refer briefly to the widespread 
notion that fish is particularly valuable for brain food. The percentages 
of phosphorus in the analyses above reported are not larger than are 
found, according to the best analyses, in the flesh of other animals used 
for food. The number of reliable determinations of flesh in the latter 
are, however, small, and it is, though very improbable, yet within the 
range of possibility that a more complete investigation of the subject 
might reveal a smaller proportion of phosphorus in meats than in fish. 
But even if the fish be richer in phosphorus there is no proof that 
it would on that account be better for brain food. The question of the 
nourishment of the brain and the sources of intellectual energy are 
too indeterminate to allow decisive statements, and too abstruse for 
speedy solution in the present condition of our knowledge. 
