Quality Of Water

Distilled water is undoubtedly the safest water to drink; next to this comes water which has been boiled for fifteen or twenty minutes. Filtered water cannot be depended upon, the filter itself in many instances being a hot bed of germs. Too much care cannot be exercised in having a supply of pure water. Safety lies in boiling or distilling it. Water may be used at a temperature ranging from hot 60 to 70° F., or it may be taken hot or moderately cool. Nursing infants, particularly, cry for water, and it should be given to them, freely, in many instances, in place of milk. Where ice water is used, under no circumstances should ordinary ice be put into the water, otherwise the water may become contaminated with sewage or other poisonous material. Lemon juice, lime juice, or any other acid fruit juices, are valuable as water purifiers.

Mineral waters have no special advantages over plain, pure water. Pure water may be easily medicated by the addition of a little common salt, with, or without, the addition of some sulphate and phosphate of soda. The better class of mineral waters is represented by Vichy and Seltzer.

As in Eating, so in Drinking, let it be in moderation.

Pure, cool water, is man's natural drink

The Chemistry Of Food

FOODS may be divided into four classes: 1. The Nitrogenous, also called Albuminates, or Proteids (albumen being taken as the typical member of the group); 2. Starches and Sugar; 3. Fats; 4. Water and the various mineral substances termed Salts. The Albuminates, Albumens, or Proteids, it may be explained, are highly complex compounds of Nitrogen 17%, Carbon 52%, Oxygen 22%, Hydrogen 7%, Sulphur 2%. Phosphorous, a trace; and are the most important substances that occur in animal and vegetable organisms, none of the phenomena of life occuring without their presence. Without them life would cease. The function, principally of the albumins, is to repair the wear and tear of tissues, hence they are called muscle builders. Albumen or proteid material is found chiefly in nuts, meat, eggs, milk, cream, cheese, and legumes, such as peas, beans, and lentils, and to a lesser extent in the grains The Carbo-hydrates contain precisely the same chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, as the fats, only in a less concentrated form.

The Starches and Sugars may be taken as types of carbo-hydrates. They exist in cereals or grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Fats furnish heat and energy to the body, and consist of Carbon 79%, Hydrogen 11%, Oxygen 10%. Nuts, containing as they do from 50 to 60% of emulsified fats, fat which is miscible with water, furnish force in a way unapproached by any other food. Fats occur in most of the proteid foods.

Water, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, forms about 65% of the weight of the human body, and is an essential constituent of put food. Indeed, there is no vital action possible without water.

The Mineral Salts,. which are indispensable for nutritive processes, are found in greatest quantities and purest state in fruits and fresh vegetables.

Proteids Composition

Few persons without previous consideration would be likely to consider that the various food elements, meat, nuts, eggs, peas, etc., would have any marked points of similarity, yet this is just exactly what we find to be the case. Chemistry teaches us that the differences in foods are not so much differences in material of which they are composed, as it is differences in the arrangement of their material. The albumins or proteids are the same wherever we find them, whether it be in the animal or vegetable kingdom. The practical import of this is that nuts, peas, beans, meats, eggs, milk, cheese, are all exactly alike, in so far as their albumen or proteid material is concerned. And it will have been noticed that the carbo-hydrates are like the fats in their composition, so that when resolved down to its simplest form, food, in its essentials, is a matter of very few elements.

Normal

Each of the four elements, Albumins or Proteids, Carbo-hydrates, Fats, and Salts, contributes a definite part to the growth and repair of the body; and each undergoes in the body a special set of changes before it becomes a part of that body, to be burned up and used in the production of heat and work. It is interesting to notice that while the normal physiological conditions are maintained, there is exactly the same amount of new material absorbed and assi-mulaced as there is of effete matter, the products of the nitrogressive tissue changes, removed by the organs of excretion. When the body is in this state of physiological equilibrium or natural balance, the proteids, containing the nitrogen of the blood, are excreted in the form of urea and carbonic acid within twenty-four hours. While of all the carbon taken in the food, about 90% is excreted in the form of carbonic acid by the lungs and skin, and about 10% in the urinary excreta and faeces. The hydrogen is eliminated chiefly in the form of carbonic acid and water. The soluble salts are mostly discharged in the urine, some pass off in the perspiration. The sulphur which is contained in albumen is, in part, excreted in the form of urinary sulphates, and in part, in the faeces, and a small proportion by the skin. We have seen what takes place with food when taken into the body under normal or natural con-ditions - a perfect condition of health. Under abnormal conditions, however, we have quite a different condition of affairs. An excess of food of any kind results in the rnal-assimulation or perversion of food.