CHAPTER 78 



Food Materials and Their Functions 



By Miss Nellie E. Goldthwaite, Ph.D. 

 Dean of Women, New Hampshire College 



Woman, from the savage state on, has been more fundamentally 

 interested in foods and food-products than man. This has been true 

 because of the dependence of the young upon her. She who bore the little 

 ones must find food for them when her breast no longer furnishes suste- 

 nance. For the children who walked by her side she was still responsible. 

 It was she who gathered fruits and berries for their subsistence. Perhaps 

 it was she who first noted the sprouting of seeds and thus learned how she 

 could increase the food-supply of her family. Possibly she was the first 

 agriculturist. At least, we know that among all primitive peoples it was 

 woman who tilled the soil. So, from the most primitive times on, it has 

 been woman's work and pleasure to be interested in foods. Sad will it be 

 for the race if she ever lose that interest. 



In these days when science is rapidly unlocking the mysteries concern- 

 ing the ways in which food sustains life, subjects of vital interest to human- 

 ity, let not the woman be ignorant. It is still her province to mother the 

 young and to look into the ways of her household. Today she may, if she 

 will, profit by the researches of a multitude of workers. But there is no 

 royal road to learning. It takes time and patient work to grasp the under- 

 lying principles in any field of knowledge. Let the woman once grasp 

 the fact that food not only preserves life, but that the general condition 

 of the body depends largely upon the food taken into it, and she will be 

 quick to make herself intelligent concerning the principles of human 

 nutrition. Planning the family dietary is a work worthy of the best 

 thought. 



Elements of the Body. — Scientists tell us that our earth is composed 

 of about eighty different elements, i. e., simplest forms of matter. Our 

 bodies consist of about a dozen of these elements that have been taken from 

 the earth and so combined with each other that we should not recognize 

 any one of them as elements. Combinations of elements in which each one 

 has lost its own peculiar identity, we call compounds. 



Chemists generally agree that our bodies are composed of the 

 following elements, and that each is present in about the percentage 

 given:* 



* Sherman, " Food and Xutrition," page 260. 



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