150 
SECOND BOOK. 
a piece of lean meat is made up of fibres, which are 
bound together in various ways to form muscles. 
Weight for weight, beef is more nourishing than 
either mutton or pork, but it is not so easily digested 
as mutton. 
11. Sometimes animal foods, especially fish, are 
salted, to preserve them until they are needed for 
use. It is very convenient to be able to do this; 
but the salted meat or fish is not so good for us as 
the fresh, because the salt hardens the fibres, and 
it also draws out much of the juice, so that we thus 
lose a portion of the food. 
12. Milk has been called a ‘ model diet ’, because 
it contains, in proper amounts, the four classes of' 
foods needful for health and growth in early life. 
It has the flesh-former, casein, and the heat-givers, 
fat and sugar, as well as some mineral matter, and 
a very large proportion of water. Although grown- 
up persons need a change of diet, an infant needs 
no other food than milk. 
THE BEST KIND OF DIET. 
l. “After all that we have talked and read about 
foods, can you tell me why we take so many differ- 
ent kinds, instead of fixing upon one we like and 
eating only that ?” 
This was the question that Miss Brooks put to 
May one day. 
