Food Element Importance
Food’s functions are to promote growth, supply force and heat, and provide material to repair the waste that occurs constantly in the body. Every breath, every thought, every movement wears out a piece of the delicate and wonderful house we live in.
Various vital processes remove these worn and useless particles, and their loss must be compensated for by constantly renewed supplies of material properly adapted to replenish the worn and impaired tissues in order to keep the body healthy. This renovating material must be supplied through the medium of food and drink, and the best food is that which allows the desired end result to be attained most easily and perfectly. Because of the great variety in character of the various tissues of the body, food must contain a variety of elements in order for each part to be properly nourished and replenished.
The food components.
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Food contains the following elements: starch, sugar, fats, albumen, mineral substances, and indigestible substances.
The digestible food elements are frequently classified into three groups based on their chemical composition: carbonaceous, nitrogenous, and inorganic. The carbonaceous class contains starch, sugar, and fats; the nitrogenous class contains all albuminous elements; and the inorganic class contains mineral elements.
Starch is only found in vegetables; all grains, most vegetables, and some fruits are high in starch. Nature’s laboratory produces several types of sugar, including cane, grape, fruit, and milk sugar. The first is derived from sugarcane, maple tree sap, and beet root. Most fruits and honey contain grape and fruit sugars. One of the components of milk is milk sugar.
Glucose, an artificial sugar that resembles grape sugar, is now largely manufactured by subjecting corn or potato starch to a chemical process; however, it lacks the sweetness of natural sugars and is not a suitable substitute for them. Albumen can be found in its purest, uncombined form in the white of an egg, which is almost entirely made up of albumen. It can be found in many other foods, both animal and vegetable, in combination with other food elements.
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It is abundant in oatmeal, and to a lesser extent in other grains and vegetable juices. All natural foods contain elements that, in many ways, resemble albumen and are so closely related to it that they are usually classified under the general name “albumen” for convenience. Gluten is the most common of these, and it can be found in wheat, rye, and barley. This class includes casein, which is found in peas, beans, and milk, as well as flesh fibrin.
Fats can be found in both animal and plant foods. Butter and suet are common examples of animal fats. Fat is abundant in vegetables such as nuts, peas, beans, grains, and a few fruits such as the olive. This element is always found in a state of fine subdivision as provided by nature in nuts, legumes, grains, fruits, and milk, which condition is best adapted to its digestion.
It is not only difficult to digest when used in the form of free fats such as butter, lard, and so on, but it also interferes with the digestion of other food elements that are mixed with it. It was almost certainly never intended for fats to be so altered from their natural state and separated from other food elements as to be used as a separate article of food.
The same can be said of the other carbonaceous elements, sugar and starch, neither of which can sustain life when used alone, but when combined in a proper and natural manner with other food elements, they play a vital role in body nutrition. Mineral elements are present in varying degrees in most foods. Grains and milk are abundant sources of these nutrients. Vegetable cellulose, or woody tissue, and wheat bran are examples of indigestible elements that, while they cannot be converted into blood in tissue, serve an important purpose by adding bulk to the food.
With the exception of gluten, none of the food elements are capable of supporting life when used alone. A true food substance contains some of each of the food elements, with the amounts varying between foods.
Food element applications
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Concerning the functions of these various elements, eminent physiologists’ experiments have shown that the carbonaceous elements, which make up the majority of the food, serve three functions in the body:
1. They provide fuel for the production of heat;
2. They are a source of force when combined with other food elements.
3. They replenish the body’s fatty tissues. Fats produce the most heat in proportion to quantity of the carbonaceous elements, starch, sugar, and fats; that is, more heat is produced from a pound of fat than from an equal weight of sugar or starch; however, this apparent advantage is more than offset by the fact that fats are much more difficult to digest than the other carbonaceous elements, and if relied upon to furnish adequate material for bodily heat, would be productive of much mischief.
The fact that nature has provided far more starch and sugars than fats in man’s natural diet would seem to indicate that they were intended to be the primary source of carbonaceous food; however, fats, when consumed in the proportions provided by nature, are necessary and important food elements.
The nitrogenous food elements, in particular, nourish the brain, nerves, muscles, and all of the body’s more vitalized and active tissues, and also act as a stimulant to tissue change. As a result, a food lacking in these elements is considered particularly poor.
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The inorganic elements, primarily phosphates, found in potash, soda, and lime carbonates help to provide the necessary building material for bones and nerves.
Food combinations that work.
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While it is important that our food contain some of all of the various food elements, experiments on both animals and humans show that these elements, particularly the nitrogenous and carbonaceous, must be used in specific proportions, because the system can only appropriate a certain amount of each; and all excess, especially of nitrogenous elements, is not only useless, but even harmful, because ridding the system of the surplus imposes a cost.
The relative proportion of these elements required to create a food that perfectly meets the system’s requirements is six carbonaceous to one nitrogenous. Scientists have devoted much careful study and experimentation to determining the quantities of each of the food elements required for the daily nourishment of individuals under varying conditions of life, and it has become widely accepted that of the nitrogenous material which should constitute one-sixth of the nutrients taken, approximately three ounces is all that can be used in twenty-four hours by a healthy adult of average weight doing a moderately strenuous activity.
Many articles of food, however, are deficient in one or both of these elements, and must be supplemented by other articles containing the deficient element in abundance, because using a dietary in which any of the nutritive elements is lacking, even if in bulk it is all the digestive organs can handle, is really starvation, and will result in serious consequences.
As a result, it is clear that great care should be taken in the selection and combination of food materials. Such knowledge is essential in the education of cooks and housekeepers because it is up to them to choose the food for the household’s daily needs; and they should not only understand what foods are best suited to supply these needs, but also how to combine them in accordance with physiological laws.
