656 POPVLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cent; fresh fish, about 16 per cent; salt cod, 27 '6 per cent; rolled 

 oats, 16 per cent; wheat flour, 12 per cent; Graham flour, 14 per 

 cent; beans, 22'2 per cent; while such vegetables as beets, cab- 

 bage, corn, celery, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, etc., contain 

 on an average not more than 1*5 per cent of foods that nourish 

 the brain. Pie, pudding, cake, cookies, and crackers contain at 

 the outside not over six to seven per cent, even when these are so 

 cooked that the little substance they contain may be extracted in 

 digestion.* The writer has ascertained the bills of fare of many 

 school children by direct observation and by having them write 

 out the customary articles of diet with mode of cooking, and he 

 has found, what is doubtless already well known, that in many 

 homes the children live quite largely upon vegetables, white 

 bread, and pastry and cakes of various kinds. Parents are oft- 

 times satisfied if their children eat a large amount of such things, 

 thinking it is primarily the quantity, not the quality, which is to 

 be considered in securing nutrition. As a consequence, those 

 children that live largely upon a starchy diet are in a more or 

 less constant state of brain exhaustion, and they will be liable to 

 manifest all the evidences of fatigue which have been described 

 in preceding paragraphs. 



It happens frequently in the homes of the well-to-do, where the 

 expense can have nothing to do with the matter, that the children 

 are permitted to live almost wholly upon those foods which seem 

 to delight the palate, as cookies and cakes in a variety of forms, 

 but which contain relatively little nutrition, the principal in- 

 gredient being starch in the form of wheat flour. It is the prac- 

 tice often to begin in the early months of a child's life to feed it 

 highly seasoned and sweet foods, thus establishing an appetite 

 which later is not satisfied with the simple nourishing meats, 

 grains, and milk. In the poorer homes, in our cities particular- 

 ly, many are unwise in the expenditure of what money they can 

 spare for food, purchasing mainly starchy foods, which, although 

 of relatively little value anyway, are yet more suited for the adult 

 engaged in out-of-door labor than for a child at mental work in 

 school, f Usually in such homes children eat the same food that 



* Dietary Studies at the Maine State College in 1895, published by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No 37, pp. 11-17. See also Prof. Atwater's Analy- 

 ses, published by the Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 23 ; and Meats : Composi- 

 tion and Cooking, Bulletin No. 34. 



f Atwater (op. cit.) gives quite a number of dietaries showing how money may be spent 

 to greatest advantage in poor homes. Atkinson, in his Science of Nutrition, pp. 11-65, 

 Springfield, Mass., 1892, also discusses the subject quite fully. An attempt is made by both 

 these authorities to state just what proportions of the different nutritive elements a child's 

 dietary should contain at different ages, but the results are nothing more than suggestive, 

 for children differ greatly in their needs. A highly organized, nervous child, working hard 



