CHEESE. 57 



, In tlie manufacture there should be a regard to health as well as 

 taste. Milk is the first and natural food of man. It would appear? 

 therefore, that cheese eaten as^food, to be most healthful, must par- 

 take, as nearly as may be, of the ingredients of milk in natural pro- 

 portion. If cream is added to the milk, it makes a cheese too rich 

 for common use as food, and if taken from it, too poor. Of all indi- 

 gestible articles of diet, scarcely any can be more so, than hard skim 

 milk cheese. It is a wonder how that called the Suffolk, (Eng.), 

 whose milk is skimmed three or four days in succession, can be di- 

 gested in human stomachs, for it often requires an axe to cut it, and 

 is said to be so hard that " pigs grunt at it, dogs bark at it, but neith- 

 er of them dare bite it." 



Mr. Johnson, an English writer on agriculture and chemistry, has 

 given a table, compai-ing the ingredients of milk, cheese, (new and 

 akim milk) beef and eggs, as follows : — 



CHEESE. 



New. Skim. 



45 80 



48 11 



1(]0 100 100 100 100 



To this the folloAving remarks are appended ; " We see from this 

 table that both cheeses are free from sugar. Either of them, there- 

 fore, must be eaten with a quantity of vegetable food, which may sup- 

 ply the starch or sugar required to make it equal to milk,' as a general 

 nourishment. Again, the new milk cheese contains more fat than 

 even the eggs. It is too rich, therefore, to be used as an every day 

 diet by the generality of stomachs. It is partly for this, and partly 

 for the previous reason, that cheese and bread are almost invariably 

 eaten together. 



Then, in the skim milk cheese, we have only eleven per cent of fat 

 mixed with eighty per cent of the very constipating curd. Experience 

 has shown this to be far too little, and therefore butter or fat bacon, 

 as well as bread, must be consumed along with these poorer cheeses, 

 when much of them is intended to be eaten ; or they must ba cooked 

 in made dishes, along with some other variety of fat." 



The conclusion of the whole matter is, that, as unskimmed milk is the 

 most healthful to drink, so is unskimmed-milk-chcese most healthful 

 to eat ; and that which is most agreeable to a healthy palate may gen- 

 erally be presumed to be most healthful to the animal system. 



*The curd of milk, muscle of meat and white of eggs are nearly ideuticai. 



