APPENDIX A. 



THE following extended quotations are taken from Mrs. Mary Hin- 

 man Abel's Essay on Food and Cooking (which won the prize of the 

 American Public Health Association): 



" Importance of Fats. All the fats consumed by us, without ex- 

 ception, are composed of three bodies called neutral fats, mixed together 

 in varying proportions. These three bodies are "olein," "palmitin" 

 (margarin), and "stearin," and the chief difference between them is 

 that they melt at different temperatures ; the more olein a fat has, the 

 more easily it melts, and the less it has, the more it is like tallow. In 

 vegetable oils we find, in addition to these, small quantities of what are 

 called 'fatty acids;' and in butter we have, besides the three common 

 fats, a smaller per cent of four scarcer ones. 



"Practically, therefore, all fats are alike; and when absorbed they 

 do the same work in the body, their varying flavors and their colors 

 having nothing to do with this. 



" However, their flavor, their appearance, and the ease with which 

 they melt in the mouth and in the digestive tract, have much to do with 

 our estimation of them as foods. Mutton fat will do our body the same 

 service as butter; but because of the relatively small amount of olein it 

 contains, we have difficulty in swallowing it. 



"As to the comparative digestibility of these fats, it is generally ad- 

 mitted that those which melt at a low temperature, like butter and vege- 

 table oils, are most readily taken up by the system; it is thought that 

 we could digest beeswax if it would melt in the stomach. Still, although 

 butter stands in common estimation as the most digestible, as it is the 

 most palatable of the fats, the stomach finds no trouble in disposing of 

 reasonable amounts of any fats used in the household. 



"The fact that all fats are so similar in composition, and that, if 

 once digested, they will do the same service in the body, first led scien- 

 tists to try to make out of the cheaper fats a substitute for butter. It 

 was Napoleon III. who set a chemist to work to discover an artificial 



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