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BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



for human food than we had yet come to recognize. The 

 albuminoids are all there, and it is a valuable food. Of 

 sugar there are five pounds in every hundred pounds 

 of skim-milk. Over large areas of your country and ours 

 it is fed to swine. If we understood its value as human 

 food, we would count it too costly a food to give to pigs, 

 because that kind of sugar is worth rather more for sustain- 

 ing life than any other sugar you can obtain. 



I will say a word or two on two or three typical foods. 

 I need not try to give you definitions. One hears a great 

 deal said in reference to the feeding of cows according to 

 what is called the correct nutritive ratio. " The nutritive 

 ratio " is a phrase familiar to many minds, and its meaning 

 is not at all clear to others. 



For the sustenance of human life in a healthy person, I 

 dare say you would find oatmeal to have a very excellent 

 nutritive ratio, that is, the quantity of albuminoids would 

 ])e in such a proportion to the quantity of fat and carbo- 

 hydrates as would meet the needs of a man's body in the best 

 way with the least waste. Food may be spoken of as sub- 

 stances taken into the body to repair waste by replacing 

 worn-out or worn-off particles, to furnish heat or energy, and 

 in the case of those animals that give an increase in weight 

 or give a product, it supplies the materials out of which these 

 are formed. 



Chart No. 3. 



Composition of Some Common Foods, in Percentages. 



