SOME OE THE AOTMALS EED SLAUGHTEEED AS HTT MAIV FOOD. 577 
It would appear to be unquestionable, therefore, that the influence of the introduc- 
tion of our staple animal foods, to supplement our otherwise mainly farinaceous diet, is, 
on the large scale, to reduce, and not to increase, the relation of the assumed flesh- 
forming material, to the more peculiarly respiratory and fat-forming capacity, so to 
speak, of the food consumed. 
That, nevertheless, a dietary containing a due proportion of animal food, is, for some 
reason or other, better adapted to meet the collective requirements of the human 
orgamsm, at least under many conditions, than an exclusively Bread, or other vegetable 
one, the testimony of common experience may be accepted as sufficient evidence. Inde- 
pendently of any difierence in the physical, and perhaps even chemical relations of the 
supposed flesh-forming nitrogenous compounds in animal food, which may render them, 
at least m limited quantity, more easily available to the purposes of the system than the 
assumed analogous vegetable ^products, it is at any rate clear, that the main and charac- 
teristic distmction between a Bread — and a mixed Bread and Meat diet — consists, not 
only in the quantitatively higher relation of the respiratory and fat-forming capacity to 
a given amount of assumed flesh-forming material in the latter, but in the fact, that the 
%0%-flesh-forming constituents in the animal portions of the food, are in the form of 
fat itself and not as in Bread, of mainly starch. 
In/a^, we have the most concentrated respiratory— and of course /«?^-storing material 
also— which our food-stuffs supply. But independently of the far greater capacity, so 
far as the supply of constituents is concerned, of a given weight and bulk of Fat com- 
pared with Starch and the other substances of its class— would it not seem probable, that 
the tax upon the system would be less, at least for Fat-storing, if not in a degree for 
respnation also, in the case of the ready-formed Fat, than in that of the Starch from 
which it may be formed \ 
Again, It has been shown that Fat subserves important purposes in aiding the 
cigestion, and preparation for assimilation, of the matters ingested with it. And 
certainly the natural distribution and blending of the Fat with the nitrogenous com- 
pounds in meat, is such as is not met with in our staple vegetable foods. May it not 
0 e supposed, that its hberal distribution with the transforming nitrogenous matters 
oug out t e body, will modify the character of the changes constantly going forward, 
rom that which would obtain, were the needed oxidable material kept up in larger 
proportion through the means, more or less directly, of the cun-ent supplies of Starch, 
and other matters not Fat, in the food \ 
But whatever may prove to be the exact explanations of the benefits arising from a 
neotP 1 vegetable diet, it is at any rate clear, that they are essentially con- 
Dortin condUion, and the distribution, of the Fat in the animal 
, ® tiue, that the very basis of some of our illustrations has 
e assumption, that Starch and its analogues on the one hand, and Fat on the 
-ami ^ sense, and within certain limits indilferently, mutually replaceable; 
ui er, that they are so, in approximately measurable proportions. It is, however. 
