ix HYGIENE OF DIGESTION AND ABSORPTION 107 



lard, olive oil, vinegar, liquors and wines, drugs and 

 medicines, and, it is said, in Paris, even eggs, are among 

 the things that are made cheaper and less wholesome 

 by various processes of adulteration. 



85. Cooking. We have already learned some reasons 

 for cooking foods. Let us now see the relation of cook- 

 ing to digestion. Nearly all foods, both vegetables and 

 meats, are softened by cooking so that they may be more 

 easily changed by the digestive juices of the alimentary 

 canal. Proper cooking of foods is really a kind of diges- 

 tion, or the first step in the process of changing foods 

 into blood. Fats are an exception. Cooking makes fats 

 more difficult to digest, since they are changed chemi- 

 cally when exposed to a high temperature even for a 

 short time. That explains why potatoes, eggs, and 

 meats when fried are less digestible than when cooked 

 in any other way. Frying is the least wholesome mode 

 of preparing foods, because the butter used permeates 

 the entire mass so that neither the saliva nor the gastric 

 juice can act upon the foods to any extent. They must 

 go undigested until they reach the small intestine, where 

 the pancreatic juice acts upon them. 



Boiling is the mode of cooking generally employed 

 for vegetables. It is better to boil than to fry meats. 

 Baking and roasting come next in importance, but broil- 

 ing is by far the most wholesome way of preparing meats. 

 By this method all the juices of the meats are saved, 

 the high heat sealing them up at once. 



Scientific cooking, by utilizing foods to their full 

 extent with the smallest amount of waste, will do much 



