
FOOD INVESTIGATIONS. 125 
of food, such as the fats of meats and butter, sugar and sweet- 
meats, and starch which makes up the larger part of the 
nutritive material of flour and potatoes. Conversely, we have 
relatively too little of the protein or flesh-forming substances, 
like the lean of meat and fish and the gluten of wheat, which 
make muscle and sinew and which are the basis of blood, bone 
and brain. 
Thirdly, many people, not only the well-to-do, but those in 
moderate circumstances, use needless quantities of food. Part 
of the excess, however, is simply thrown away with the wastes 
of the table and the kitchen: so that the injury to health, great 
as it may be, is doubtless much less than if all were eaten. 
Probably the worst sufferers from this evil are well-to-do people 
of sedentary occupations—brain-workers as distinguished from 
hand-workers. 
Finally, we are guilty of serious errors in our cooking. We 
waste a great deal of fuel in the preparation of our food, and 
even then a great deal of the food is very badly cooked. A 
reform in the methods of cooking is one of the economic 
demands of our time, 
The following is from the article on Food and Diet in the 
Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture 
referred to beyond: 
‘* Just where, and among what classes of people this waste of food is worst, 
it is not possible to say, but there is certainly a great deal more of it in the United 
States than in Europe. There may be more in boarding-houses than in private 
families, and still more in hotels and restaurants. ‘lhe worst sufferers from it 
are, doubtless, the poor, but the large body of people of moderate means, the 
_ intelligent and fairly well-to-do wage-workers, are guilty of similar errors in 
this regard. . 
“Sometimes this bad economy is due to ignorance. The School of Sociology 
in Hartford in codperation with the Storrs Experiment Station, is undertaking 
some inquiries into the food supply in that city. The first family visited was 
that of an Irish coal laborer, who earns $8 a week when he has full work. The 
week the inquiry was begun he earned a little over $6; the week before he had 
only work enough to bring $2.50. The family consists of himself, wife and five 
children. The day on which the inquiry began they spent 35 cents for bread, 
Service as a cook in a well-to-do family before she was married had shown the 
mother, how to make good bread. She had plenty of spare time to make it at 
home, and 13 cents would have paid for the flour, yeast and other materials, 
including the extra coal needed to make the day’s supply, which she had bought 
of the baker. She had not thought so far as to see that she might thus have 
easily saved 23 cents a day in that item alone. She was, however, wise enough 
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