CARBOHYDRATES. 359 



very hot. An excellent selection of low-priced beef is the fat middle 

 rib ; the lean part is very tender and juicy when cooked in water at a 

 low temperature for two or three hours (or in the heat-saver mentioned 

 below); and the fat, if served very hot, any but a pampered taste will 

 relish. Too much cannot be said in praise of pork as furnishing a good- 

 tasting and cheap fat; it can be cooked in many ways, and used to flavor 

 vegetables, etc. 



"It is consoling to the economist to know that little of this food 

 principle will be wasted in the body. Fat is more completely absorbed, 

 according to the testimony of the experimenters, than any other kind 

 of food, even meat. 



" Carbohydrates, and Carbohydrate - containing Foods. 

 As we have seen, that troublesome body, cellulose, plays here a large 

 role. It is the skeleton, so to speak, of plants, built by them out of sugar 

 and starch ; the chemist finds no difficulty, in his laboratory, in turning 

 it back into dextrin and sugar, and our stomachs, too, can digest a large 

 part of the cellulose of very young and tender plants, from 47 to 62 per 

 cent, it has been found, of young lettuce, celery, and cabbage ; but in 

 older plants, the cellulose proper becomes all intergrown and incrusted 

 with substances of a woody and mineral nature, from which even the 

 chemist separates it with the greatest difficulty, while our digestive juices 

 are entirely unequal to the task. Therefore it is that the whole art of 

 the cook is needed in treating this substance. She must soften it ; she 

 must break it up, and in many cases separate it as completely as pos- 

 sible from the sugars, starches, and proteids, which it hinders us from 

 appropriating to our use. 



" In some cases, as in oatmeal and in graham flour, we leave the 

 cellulose, because of its mechanical action on the bowels. To be sure, 

 this is a wasteful process, .for the cellulose carries with it, when it leaves 

 the body, considerable undigested food; but better this way than to 

 give the muscles of our intestines so little work to do that they become 

 unable to digest any but fine, condensed food. 



" As a rule, however, we must think of cellulose not as a food at all, 

 but as a tough foreign body which we must reckon with before we can 

 utilize the proteid and fat particles of many important vegetable foods. 



" The carbohydrates, especially the starches, are the cheapest of the 

 food constituents, and therefore most apt to be in excess, especially in 

 the food of the poor. According to estimates already given, an adult 

 at average hard work gets along nicely with one and one-eighth pounds 



