Food for Buoyant Health 219 



week: milk, bread, butter, mixed fruit salad, peanut butter, 

 and carrots. These lunches were adequate in every respect." 



Wasted Minerals 



Not only are we being educated to make our dollars and 

 points go further at the market, but housewives are being 

 taught not to destroy the value they get at the market by 

 wrong handling of food. We would laugh at a savage who, 

 meeting an egg for the first time, threw away the inside of the 

 egg and ate the shell. But far too many cooks have overcooked 

 vegetables, thrown the minerals and the annihilated vitamins 

 down the drain, and fed their family the husks "daintily ar- 

 ranged for taste appeal." 



Miss Nichols, of the Food Distribution Administration, says 

 that one of the most serious forms of waste is "hidden waste" 

 of the vitamin content of food through improper handling 

 such as squeezing orange juice the night before, and prepar- 

 ing a vegetable salad several hours before eating, and cooking 

 vegetables in too much water. 



An article in the magazine You, for fall, 1941, sums up the 

 vital necessity of the mineral content of the body thus: 



"You are very watery. Your brains are 79 per cent water, 

 your body as a whole is 70 per cent water. It is the other 30 

 per cent of ingredients that makes all the difference between 

 a puddle and a person. That vital 30 per cent is composed of 

 proteins, fats, minerals, and carbohydrates, in that order. 



"Some seven pounds of you consists of a variety of metals 

 ranging from salt to aluminum. Nobody has yet figured out 

 what the aluminum is for, but at least 1 1 of the other minerals 

 are as necessary to you as the steel girders are to a sky 

 scraper. 



"All the iron in your body would make only five carpet 

 tacks, but without it you would promptly smother to death, 



