SUMMARY. 
225 
3. Pulses. The chief pulses are beans, peas, and lentils. These are 
rich in nitrogenous or flesh-forming food. 
4. Fruits. (1) The Banana. About three-fourths of the ripe fruit con- 
sist of water ; the remainder is chiefly sugar , with a little gluten. 
The banana, though valuable in hot countries, is not of itself a perfect food, because 
of its short supply of flesh-forming material. It requires the addition of such food as 
meat, pulse, or fish. 
(2) The Bread Fruit , when unripe, contains much starch, which, as the 
fruit ripens, changes into sugar. 
That fruits, like tubers, hold a great quantity of water, may be seen from the 
following figures 
Rice has 14£ parts water in 100. 
Corn ,. 15 ., ,. .. 100 
Banana,, 74 ,. ,. .. 100. 
Yam ., 80 ,. ,, .. 100. 
Animal Foods- — These include the flesh of animals, birds, fishes, 
&c. ; also milk and eggs. They are nitrogenous, or contain flesh-forming 
material. 
Asa rule animal foods are sooner digested than vegetable foods; are more appetizing-, 
and, bulk for bulk, more nutritious. 
Milk is a “model food”, containing in proper proportions all the sub- 
stances required both for building up the body, and for keeping up its heat 
and strength. 
Milk is made up of about 87 parts in the hundred of water, about 3 of fat (butter 
cream), about \\ of casein, and a little more of milk-sugar, the rest being different 
salts 
Therefore, milk is a carbonaceous, a nitrogenous, and a mineral food. 
Mineral Foods- — The chief (besides water) are: 
Salt. 
Li me; in hard water, and in milk, meat, &c. 
Potash; in fresh vegetables and fruits. 
Iron; in most foods. 
Sulphu r; in the yolk of eggs, &c. 
THE BEST KIND OF DIET (p. 150). 
Necessity for a Mixed Diet. — This necessity may be thus 
illustrated. Cocoes or bananas are an excellent food, but if used alone as 
a diet we should require to eat large quantities daily, to get as much nitro- 
genous material as we require to rebuild waste. But we should then eat 
much more carbonaceous material than we require. And the unneces- 
sary carbonaceous, or starchy matter, would thus be wasted, and would do 
us harm before we got rid of it. But cocoes with meat or fish would give 
us what we require if we consumed a smaller quantity of the mixed food 
than of the cocoes alone. 
( m 387 ) 
P 
