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Updated: September 28, 2025
Does this mean that the essential process of what we call life is a chemical one? So it would seem on the basis of this fact alone, but a conclusion must be deferred until we reach a later point. The second kind of substance which we find in protoplasm is the carbohydrate.
CELLULOSE is a form of carbohydrate closely related to starch. It helps to form the structure of plants and vegetables. Very little cellulose is digested, but it should not be ignored, because it gives the necessary bulk to the food in which it occurs and because strict attention must be paid to the cooking of it.
While the facts just brought out have much to do with food economy, they are of interest here chiefly because they help to make clear the term carbohydrate, which, as will be admitted, is the only correct name for the food substance it represents. STARCH, one of the chief forms of carbohydrates, is found in only the vegetable kingdom.
Much experimenting has been done with a view to determining these proportions, but the results so far are not entirely satisfactory. According to some of the older estimates, a person of average size requires for his daily use five ounces of proteid, two and one half ounces of fat, and fifteen ounces of carbohydrate.
Fat yields more energy and heat than does carbohydrate, bulk for bulk; but fat is burned by our tissues less readily. We instinctively avoid eating a great deal of this food-stuff; in the course of a day the average person consumes no more than one or two ounces. The natural aversion which many feel toward fat may possibly depend upon the difficulty with which they assimilate it.
How I wished, as I read, that my uncle could have shared with me this revelation of a secret that he had spent his life in a fruitless effort to unravel. We had long since discovered how the Germans had synthesized the carbohydrate molecule from carbon dioxide and water and built therefrom the sugars, starches and fat needed for human nutrition.
While all the five food substances water, mineral matter, protein, fat, and carbohydrate are to be found in cereals, they occur in different quantities in the various kinds. Some contain large quantities of protein and others practically none, and while certain ones have considerable fat others possess comparatively small quantities.
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