

RESULTS OF FOOD INVESTIGATIONS. Eek 
could be supplied by various food mixtures—some dearer and 
some cheaper. If the costlier meats, oysters, or eggs at high 
prices are used, the diet will be an expensive one, but if the 
animal food is used in the forms of the less costly meats, in 
milk and cheese in not too large quantities, and if the bulk of 
the diet consists of such wholesome vegetable foods as wheat 
flour, corn meal, oatmeal, peas, beans, and potatoes when the 
last are not too dear, the cost will be very much less. 
THERE NUTRITIVE INGREDIENTS OF FOOD. 
In the report of this Station for 1896, may be found a table 
giving the composition of the more common food materials. 
Some specimens of food mixtures, with amounts of ingredients 
and costs, are given in the daily menus beyond. 
Our common food materials differ greatly in the amounts of 
nutrients they contain. Of the whole weight of an average 
piece of beefsteak, round, a little less than one-third would be 
actual nutritive material. In smoked ham the proportion of 
nutritive ingredients is larger, nearly one-half the whole weight. 
In milk the proportion is a little over one-eighth, in potatoes 
less than one-fifth, while in wheat flour seven-eighths of the 
whole weight consists of actual nutrients. 
The different food materials differ likewise in the kinds of 
nutritive ingredients. Thus in butter, salt pork, and wheat 
flour seven-eighths of the weight is nutritive material. In the 
butter and fat pork this material consists almost entirely of 
fatty or oily substances, while the wheat flour has extremely 
little fat or oil. Its chief ingredient is starch, although it con- 
tains considerable quantities of protein in the albuminoid com- 
pounds of the gluten. A pound of potatoes as ordinarily 
cooked and eaten would furnish a little over one-sixth of a 
pound of actual nutrients, which is a little more than the 
amount in a pound of salt codfish. But the nutritive material 
of the salt codfish would be mainly protein, while in the pota- 
toes it would be chiefly starch, and neither would contain any 
considerable amount of fat. In milk and oysters the nutritive 
ingredients make about one-eighth of the total weight, and the 
proportions of protein, fats and carbohydrates are so nearly 
alike in the two that both might be grouped together as having 
similar nutritive value. But the flour and butter, although 
they contain the same amount of nutritive ingredients, could 
