BUYING FOODS FIG. 8. Milk is especially valuable for its lime and the vitamin in its cream. Vegetables and fruits are rich in minerals and vitamins. Grains are used the world over to supply the body with heat and strength. DURING a strike in Chicago a poor woman spent her last ten cents for lettuce to feed her hungry family. She did not know that lettuce is nineteen twentieths water, and that a pound of corn meal will furnish the body with as much heat and strength as will twenty-two pounds of lettuce. One who buys food for a family where the income is not large must watch the markets and learn to pick articles that are not high priced. At the same time the buyer must secure such a variety of foods that they will give the body enough of all of the substances that it needs. To do this requires a knowledge of the needs of the body and of the materials that are in the different foodstuffs. How to select foods. Hard-working people and growing children need a great deal of the heating and strengthening foods, and these may form three fourths of all that they eat. Of such foods, the grains and products made from them, like flour, corn meal, rice, and oatmeal, are the cheapest. Next in low price and in heat- and strength-giving value are white and sweet potatoes, which are cheap whenever they are plentiful. Sugar, molasses, and corn sirup furnish us with heat and strength at a little higher price than do the grains. Dried fruits contain sugar in a more expensive form than sugar and sirups. Fat meat, salt pork, bacon, butter, and cottonseed oil are all heat and strength giving, but cost more according to their food value than the grains and potatoes. Therefore, when we are buying our heating and strengthening foods, we shall do well to choose mostly grains and potatoes, with just enough fat- or sugar-containing foods to give them flavor. As the building foods cost more than the heating and strengthening foods, it is well to remember that we do not need nearly so much of them. We can also buy the cheapest of these foods, knowing that they furnish as much food value as the others. For example, a pound of round steak is more nourishing than a pound of porterhouse steak, and it is cheaper. Dried beans, which cost much less than meat, are rich in building material and may be substituted in part for meat, without injury to the health. Other meat substitutes which allow a 100 120 140 160 180 200 90 110 130 150 170 190 210 220 0 20 40 60 80 10 30 50 70 FIG. 9. The lines show the relative value in calories per pound for each of the foodstuffs named. The figures following the names give the actual calories; those at the top indicate the percentage values, corn meal standing for 100 per cent. A calorie represents the heat that it takes to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water (about a quart) one degree Centigrade (about two degrees Fahrenheit). saving in money are peas, soy beans, cream cheese, and peanut butter. If we have to choose between meat and milk, we should choose milk, as it is more nearly a perfect food than meat. Even at eighteen cents a quart, milk is no more expensive than meat at thirty-five cents a pound. When eggs are expensive, we can use the same substitutes for them that we do for meat. When they are cheap, they are an economical building food, since they give nourishment almost without waste. Besides the heating and strengthening and building foods, we must have foods which contain mineral salts and the different vitamins that are found necessary to growth and health. If we are using substitutes for meat, or if leafy vegetables are expensive, we should buy more milk in order to get enough of these health-preserving substances. Questions: 1. Into what great classes may foods be divided (pages 10 and 11)? 2. Why is the proper selection of foods important? 3. What must one know in order to make a proper selection of foods? 4. What are the cheapest heatgiving and strength-giving foods? 5. How much of the total food of a working man may be made up of heating and strengthening materials? 6. What is lacking in a meal made up of bread, potatoes, and sirup? 7. From the list on page 17 select a number of foods which will supply heat and strength at a low price. 8. Select some which supply building material at a moderate cost. 9. Why must the food for every person include either milk or meat and leafy vegetables? Suggestions and topics for development: Discuss the nutritive value of commonly used foods in relation to their current local prices. The unique place of milk in the dietary as a balanced food and as a source of minerals and vitamins should be made clear. COOKING FOODS It would be hard to think of an article of food more pleasant to the taste and more certain to agree with the digestion than warm, crisp, brown toast, made are made from the same FIG. 10. This man's work is considered so important that he is better paid than most lawyers, doctors, ministers, or teachers. The difference is in the way they are The importance of well-cooked food. It has been said that the greatest difference between the food of the rich and the food of the poor is in the cooking. There is much truth in this, for to a very considerable extent we all live on the same foods. It would take a whole book to discuss fully the subject of cooking, and we cannot attempt to do this here. There are, however, two points in regard to cooking that are so important that every one should understand them. |