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She therefore thinks of food not in terms of menus but as a means of keeping up bodily functions, as sources of protein, carbohydrate and fat terms seldom heard outside of the university a few years ago. We need food first of all to burn as fuel for all the activities of the body, just as any other machine needs fuel. The fuel value of food, or its energy, is measured in calories.

The plant, on the other hand, if it be a green plant, containing chlorophyll, is capable, in the presence of light, of building up both carbohydrate material and proteid material from inorganic salts; if it be a fungus, devoid of chlorophyll, whilst it is dependent on pre-existing carbohydrate material and is capable of absorbing, like an animal, proteid material as such, it is able to build up its proteid food from material chemically simpler than proteid.

Protein owes its importance to the fact that of the various food substances it alone contains the element nitrogen, which is absolutely essential to the formation of any plant or animal tissue. The other three elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, go to make up the carbohydrates; in fact, it is from the names of these three elements that the term carbohydrate is derived.

Manioc will do this because it needs virtually nothing from the soil to construct itself with. And consequently, manioc puts next to nothing nourishing into its edible parts. The bland-tasting root is virtually pure starch, a simple carbohydrate not much different than pure corn starch. Plants construct starches from carbon dioxide gas obtained the air and hydrogen obtained from water.

Digestion in the intestine is carried on through the agency of a number of ferments, the more important of which are supplied in the juice manufactured by the pancreas. The pancreatic secretion contains three separate and distinct ferments, which act respectively upon carbohydrate, protein, and fat. The absorption of fat, however, is materially assisted also by the action of the bile.

To aid in the selection of food, therefore, it is extremely necessary to become familiar with the five substances, constituents, or principles of which foods are made up; namely, water, mineral matter, or ash, protein, fat, and carbohydrate.

One sees at a glance that these substances agree in having twice as many hydrogen atoms as there are oxygen atoms, the same proportion that the hydrogen bears to the oxygen in the compound water, a characteristic which makes it easy to remember the general constitution of carbohydrate as compared with the protein.

Wood, according to the chemists, is a carbohydrate and the greater the proportion of carbon which it contains the greater is its heat-giving value, the greater the proportion of hydrogen the greater the output of ruddy flames. Yet chemists, who are so sure the alchemists had no ground for their beliefs, do not always agree among themselves.

The majority of these children have enormous appetites, and excess of food, and especially of carbohydrate food, plays some part in the production of the disturbance. We must guard against overfeeding, against want of air and want of exercise, and against those errors of management described in previous chapters, which produce the maximum of disturbance in this type of child.

As has already been explained, yeast, in order to grow, requires something on which to feed, and the food that produces the most rapid growth is that which contains carbohydrate. Certain of the carbohydrates, however, prove to be better food and produce more rapid growth than others, and these, which are known as yeast aids, are usually added as ingredients in the making of bread.