The economy of food ; a popular treatise on nutrition, food and diet / by J. Alan Murray.

  • Murray, J. Alan (John Alan)
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The economy of food ; a popular treatise on nutrition, food and diet / by J. Alan Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    138/277 (page 122)
    very expensive. In some cases, the prices are ridicu- lously out of proportion to the cost of production ; but in others, the prices cannot be considered excessive when the methods of preparation and other circumstances are taken into account. The majority of those which have an established repu- tation are more or less suitable for their ostensible purposes. Apart from meat preparations—which are suitable only for adults—infants’ and invalids’ foods are mostly derived from cereals, or from milk, or a mixture of the two. They may be classified accord- ing to the nature of the product and the treatment to which it has been subjected. In cereal preparations, the grains are reduced to very fine flour, and aU husks and bran are removed by repeated grinding and sifting. Some of them are disintegrated with water, cooked, dried, baked, and again ground. Others are merely well baked in the dry state. Baking destroys bacteria and fungi with which the grains are often infected, and converts some of the starch into dextrine. The last mentioned substance is soluble in water, and, therefore, easily assimilated. A large proportion of the starch, however, always remains unchanged. Several well-known foods belong to this tj^e. Wheat is the cereal principally employed, but some contain an admixture of barley. Cane sugar, milk sugar, and dextrine are sometimes added to increase the amount of soluble carbohydrates. In certain cases, pulse flour and finely ground nuts are mixed with the cereals to increase the proportions of pro- tein and fat. Infants under the age of six months are unable to assimilate starch, and foods which contain a