Part 1 (1/2)

Food in War Time.

by Graham Lusk.

FOOD IN WAR TIME

I

A BALANCED DIET

There is no doubt that under the conditions existing before the war the American people lived in a higher degree of comfort than that enjoyed in Europe. Hard times in America have always been better times than the best times in Europe. As a student in Munich in 1890 I remember paying three dollars a month for my room, five cents daily for my breakfast, consisting of coffee and a roll without b.u.t.ter, and thirty-five cents for a four-course dinner at a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant. This does not sound extravagant, but it represents luxury when compared with the diet of the poorest Italian peasants of southern Italy. Two Italian scientists describe how this cla.s.s of people live mainly on cornmeal, olive oil, and green stuffs and have done so for generations. There is no milk, cheese, or eggs in their dietary. Meat in the form of fat pork is taken three or four times a year. Cornmeal is taken as ”polenta,” or is mixed with beans and oil, or is made into corn bread. Cabbage or the leaves of beets are boiled in water and then eaten with oil flavored with garlic or Spanish pepper. One of the families investigated consisted of eight individuals, of whom two were children. The annual income was 424 francs, or $84. Of this, three cents per day per adult was spent for food and the remaining three-fifths of a cent was spent for other purposes. Little wonder that such people have migrated to America, but it may strike some as astonis.h.i.+ng that a race so nourished should have become the man power in the construction of our railways, our subways, and our great buildings.

Dr. McCollum will tell you that the secret of it all lies in the green leaves. The quality of the protein in corn is poor, but the protein in the leaves supplements that of corn, so that a good result is obtained.

Olive oil when taken alone is a poor fat in a nutritive sense, but when taken with green leaves, these furnish that one of the peculiar accessory substances, commonly known as vitamines, which is present most abundantly in b.u.t.ter-fat, and gives to b.u.t.ter-fat and to the fat in whole milk its dominant nutritive value. The green leaves likewise furnish another accessory substance, also present in milk, a substance which is soluble in water and which is necessary for normal life.

Furthermore, the green leaves contain mineral matter in considerable quant.i.ty and in about the same proportions as they exist in milk.

Here then is the message of economy in diet, corn the cheapest of all the cereals, a vegetable oil cheaper by far than animal fat, which two materials taken together would bring disaster upon the human race, but if taken with the addition of cabbage or beet-tops they become capable of maintaining mankind from generation to generation. One can safely refer to such a diet as a balanced diet. Just as in the case of the modern experimental biological a.n.a.lysis of a balanced ration in which such a ration is given to rats and its efficiency as a diet is tested by its capacity to support normal growth and reproduction of the species, so here the experimental evidence is presented that corn and olive oil may become a sustaining diet when green leaves are a supplementary factor.

This preliminary sketch shows several important fundamentals of food and nutrition. If one gives an animal a mixture of purified food-stuffs, pure protein, pure starch, purified fat, and a mixture of salts like the salts of milk, the animal will surely die. But if one subst.i.tutes b.u.t.ter-fat for purified fat, and adds a water solution of the natural salts of milk, the animal lives and thrives.

Again, the ill.u.s.tration shows how corn may be so supplemented with other food-stuffs as to become extremely valuable in nutrition. It is especially valuable at the present time because corn is comparatively cheap and plentiful. But one asks how about pellagra? It must be here definitely stated that the use of cornmeal is not the cause of pellagra, provided the right kind of other foods be taken with it. Pellagra occurs in the ”corn belt” of the United States, and especially among the poorer cla.s.ses in the south. The disease has developed since the introduction in 1880 of highly perfected milling machinery which furnishes corn and wheat completely freed from their outer coverings. In Italy, where the milling of corn is still primitive, pellagra is not so severe as with us, because the corn offal is not completely removed and this contains the accessory food substances or vitamines which are essential to life.

Pellagra is generally believed to be produced by a too exclusive use of highly milled corn and wheat flour in a.s.sociation with salt meats and canned goods, all of which are deficient in vitamines. The administration of fresh milk is naturally indicated. Goldberger states that after the addition of milk to the diet of a pellagrin, the typical clinical picture of pellagra no longer persists. The poor in the mill towns of the South lived too exclusively upon a corn diet without admixture of milk or fresh animal food or even of cabbage, and pellagra has been the consequence.

The Food Administrator asks us to eat corn bread and save the wheat for export. It is a very small sacrifice to eat corn bread at one meal or more a day. Indian corn saved our New England ancestors from starvation, and we can in part subst.i.tute it for our wheat and send the latter abroad to spare others from starvation. The simplest elements of patriotism demand that we do this. Therefore let us cry, ”Eat corn bread and save the wheat for France, the home of Lafayette!”

The United States Department of Agriculture has estimated that only 6.6 per cent. of our corn crop is used for human food, and of this, 3.4 per cent. is consumed by the farmers and their families.

The subst.i.tution of foods is no new thing. We find that an English contemporary author thus described the food habits of the English people during the ”golden days of Good Queen Bess,” three hundred and fifty years ago:

”The gentilitie commonly provide themselves sufficiently of wheat for their own tables, whylest their household and poore neighbours in some s.h.i.+res are forced to content themselves with rye or barleie; yea and in time of dearth many with bread made eyther of beanes, peason[1] or otes, or of altogether and some acornes among.”

[1] An obsolete plural of pease.

A difference between those days and ours is that the ”gentilitie” and the ”poore neighbours” are now asked to unite in reducing the consumption of wheat and to do this for the safety and welfare of all mankind.

Another point in war economy is the use of whole milk in greater quant.i.ty, and the diminution of the use of b.u.t.ter and cream. Cream is bought only by the wealthy, but in sufficient volume to largely reduce the amount of whole milk available. In Germany before the war 15 per cent. of the milk supply of that country was used for the production of cream. The consequent restriction of the milk supply was distinctly to the detriment of the health of the peasant farmers of Bavaria. Regarding the use of b.u.t.ter, a Swiss professor, himself an expert in nutrition, complains that whereas in his youth children were never given b.u.t.ter on their bread for breakfast, not even when there was no jam in the house, yet to-day absence of b.u.t.ter from the table is held to be indicative of direst poverty.

If one takes a pint of whole milk daily, or even, as we have seen, cabbage or beet-tops in its stead, one may take fat in the forms of olive oil or cottonseed oil, corn oil, cocoanut oil, peanut b.u.t.ter, or in other vegetable oils, without possible prejudice to health.

Osborne and Mendel, and more recently Halliburton, have pointed out that oleomargarine as prepared from beef-fat contains the fat-soluble growth-promoting accessory substance or vitamine which is present in b.u.t.ter-fat, but which is not contained in vegetable oils or in lard.

Halliburton and Drummond summarize the practical results of their work as follows:

But when we approach the subject of the dietary of the poorer cla.s.ses, the question is a more serious one. In ordinary times the consumption of beef dripping, which is considerable among the poor, would to a large extent supply the lacking properties of a vegetable-oil margarine. But at the present time beef itself is expensive, and the opportunities of obtaining dripping are therefore minimized. At the same time the three important foods for children already enumerated (milk, b.u.t.ter, eggs) have risen in cost, so as to be almost prohibitive to those with slender incomes. The vegetable-oil margarines still remain comparatively cheap, and the danger is that unless measures are taken to insure a proper milk supply for infants at a reasonable charge, these infants may run the risk of being fed, so far as fat is concerned, entirely upon an inferior brand of margarine, dest.i.tute of the growth-promoting accessory substance. It would be truer economy even for the poor to purchase smaller quant.i.ties of an oleo-oil margarine if they cannot afford the luxury of real b.u.t.ter.

The legal restrictions placed upon the sale of oleomargarine and the taxes enhancing its cost, now in operation in many of our states, are without warrant in morals or common sense and should be entirely abolished in times like these. A well-made brand of oleomargarine is much more palatable than b.u.t.ter of the second grade, and certainly for cooking purposes is just as valuable.

Whole milk contains everything necessary for growth and maintenance, protein, fat, milk-sugar, salts, water, and the unknown but invaluable accessory substances. It is of such prime importance that each family should have this admirable food that I have suggested that no family of five should ever buy meat until they have bought three quarts of milk.

The insistence by scientific men upon the prime importance of milk has probably had something to do with its rapid enhancement in price. This latter factor is greatly to be regretted. I have often wondered why it was that a quart bottle of a fancy brand of milk in New York should cost about as much as a quart of _vin ordinaire_ on the streets of Paris, and a quart bottle of cream as much as a quart of good champagne in Paris.

Despite much denial it appears to me that milk is not sold as cheaply as it ought to be. Everything should be done to conserve our herds of cows for the increased supply of whole milk and incidentally for the manufacture of cheese and of milk powder or of condensed milk.

If one takes milk with other foods, meat may be dispensed with. Thus Hindhede advocates as ideal a diet consisting of bread, potatoes, fruit, and a pint of milk. Splendid health, both of body and mind, the peasants' comparative immunity to indigestion, kidney and liver disease, as well as an absolute immunity to gout, is the alluring prospect held out by the following dietary: