This shows that the main difference between beef and bread is that the meat contains no starch, and nearly three times as much of the muscle making fibrin as the proportion of gluten (which is similar in many respects) in wheaten bread.
The water, climate, season, age, habits, etc., all have to do with the choice of food we eat. Besides the quantity of nourishment contained in the food, there is also the question of the ease and completeness with which it can be digested and assimilated. It is not always fat eaters who are the fattest.
Woman’s milk is considered the type of human food when the conditions approach that of the child, as the milk of the mother is the natural food of all young animals. Milk partakes of the nature of both animal and vegetable food. It contains:
These are average analyses. The casein is equivalent to the gluten of vegetables or the fibrin of meat, and the sugar to starch.
With these few general observations, let us pass on to consider in detail the Grocer’s Goods.
The cereal grains consist of solidified vegetable milk, drawn from the bosom of Mother Earth. But two of them all are used for making light and spongy bread with yeast, and wheat has the universal preference because it contains all the elements necessary to the growth and sustenance of the body. It makes bread which is more inviting to the eye and more agreeable to the taste. It is the highest type of vegetable food known to mankind, and it is claimed that the most enlightened nations of modern times owe their mental and bodily superiority to this great and beneficent product.
There is little if any difference in the nutriment or value of spring and winter wheat. Some prefer the one and some the other. Southern raised wheat is apt to be drier than northern and will better stand the effects of warm climates. Wheat varies in weight per bushel as the season is wet or dry. The best is round, plump and smooth. It contains about fifteen parts of water, sixty-five to seventy-five parts of starch, and about ten parts of gluten. The average annual production of wheat in the United States during the past eight years has been 448,815,699 bushels; an increase over the preceding ten years of forty-four per cent., while the increase of population has been only twenty-five per cent.