90 Life and Health 



digestive fluids. Cooking also makes vegetables and cereals 

 softer and enables the digestive juices readily to penetrate 

 their substance. 



Cooking improves or develops flavors in food (especially 

 in animal foods), which tend to stimulate the appetite and 

 the flow of digestive fluids. 



Another important use of cooking is that it kills any 

 minute parasites or germs in the raw food. The safeguard 

 of cooking thus effectually removes some important causes 

 of disease. 



ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 



138, Alcoholic Beverages. There is a class of liquids so 

 commonly and so widely used as beverages, and their effect 

 upon the physical life is so far-reaching, so characteristic, 

 and so dangerous, that their consideration demands special 

 treatment in this chapter. -We refer to alcoholic beverages, 

 which on account of their great variety, their remark- 

 able and widespread use, and their subtle and deleterious 

 effects upon the bodily life, should enlist our earnest 

 attention. 



139. Properties of Alcohol. Alcohol is formed out of 

 sugar by the process of fermentation. Sugar and alcohol, 

 and many other substances of widely different natures, are 

 built up of the same elements (carbon, hydrogen, and 

 oxygen), but in varying proportions. For example, common 

 or ethyl alcohol differs in chemical composition from fusel oil, 

 one of the most poisonous of the alcohol series, only in the 

 proportion of the same elements. Fermentation changes 

 the combination of the elements composing sugar in such 

 a way as to produce two very different compounds, alcohol 

 and carbon dioxide. 



