Food and life

Preface

Children have a normal, spontaneous interest in food. To a child each meal is a matter of fresh and vital consequence. His own experience prepares him to appreciate that what he eats has a direct and important bearing on his health and comfort. He responds readily to a call to take a more intelligent interest and a more active concern in his food needs and habits. War did a real service in bringing people back from the conventionally remote attitude of modern civilization to a vivid realization of the interest and importance of this universal human need. It drove home also the truth that while their elders have a responsibility for children's food, children have in their own right a relation of their own to this as to other concerns of daily life.

To Dr. Gulick there came as an inspiration the vision of a new rating of boys and girls in all their social relations. He saw them not only as "futures," not only as potential citizens and homemakers, but as " presents," contributing everywhere by doing their part as boys and girls. To him the book owes its inspiration and inception. His faith in the power of boys and girls as an effective factor in national life and service was amply justified during the war. To-day the government is making every effort to capitalize this youthful enthusiasm and persistence as a permanent asset in our individual and vi FOOD AND LIFE

community life, and as a part of our national share in banishing

famine, waste, and misery from the world brotherhood. This

book is intended to aid in that movement.

From its pages the child will learn the facts he should know

concerning the great Food Business into which he is born and

in which he is a partner. He will be led to see the need of his

becoming an intelligent and active partner. He will come into

a sense of the world brotherhood which is the hope of the

future. The ethical side is often more natural to the child than

the technical details. There is hardly a virtue or an ideal of

family, community, and world life which does not take a natural

place in a study of the fundamental human problem of food.

The actual facts are most interesting when presented simply

and entertainingly. Knowledge recently contributed by science

has made this a new subject, and one far more readily grasped

by boys and girls than it could have been five or even two years

ago. With a sufficient amount of information to make the book

a complete and satisfying whole, the aim has been to suggest

as well as to inform. From this book the child goes to the

geography lesson, to the physiology and domestic-science class,

to the garden, to the store, and to the home with a newly

awakened interest. Not only does he kiunv ; knowing, he is

stimulated at each point to do. The chapters will serve their

purpose best if the knowledge each imparts is a stimulus,

not an end. Together they provide the necessary background

of information, education, and inspiration for the child's life

as it relates to and is interpreted by his food.

M. F. L.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A Life Business i

II. The Food Tether 6

Chapter I A Life Business

Boys and girls often talk over what they will do in life. They wonder what calling they will follow when they are men and women. There is one business into which everyone is born, a business which everyone will surely follow all his life. This is the food business. Three times a day, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year, — to say nothing of odd times between, — every boy and girl, every man and woman, wishes, expects, and needs food. To get this food is man's chief business in life. So it must always be. When this is attended to, then and then only can he go about other matters.

To enter into this business you who read this book need not make a special request or application to-day. You did that long ago. From the moment when as a tiny baby you first cried for food, you have been enrolled on its lists. The minute you were born. Life, the manager of this business firm or company, took you into partnership and set you to work. So it takes into partnership every living thing, whether it be plant or animal. Without food existence is impossible. No plant is so independent that it can live without food ; no animal body is so built that it can go more than a short time without nourishment.

When a young man is received into a business, he is expected to take some share in carrying it on. You have done a good bit of work in the company already. When you were born you weighed seven or eight or nine pounds. In a few months you doubled that weight. Think how much you weigh now. All this weight and growth have come directly from the food you have eaten. That you have used this food well is shown by the fact that you are strong and healthy and that you weigh six, seven, or eight times as much as you did in the first weeks or months of your life. It is a good business partner who can make such big returns in a few short years.

Man's section of this great food enterprise of the world has three main departments. One has for its headquarters the land ; here the food must be raised. In this department Nature takes the heavier share of the work, man doing only a small assisting part. In the second department man is the active agent. He acts as middleman, delivering the food which has been grown on the land to the human body in a form in which it can be taken. The food is bought or exchanged, transported, prepared, cooked, and served.. Commerce, conservation, cooperation, all are needed

U. S. Food Administration

IT TAKES ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE TO FEED THE WORLD "

here. The third department has as many separate stations as there are people in the world. In each human body the food must be eaten, digested, and distributed.

It is interesting to be in business. You have found it so already. You will find it increasingly so the more you know about this business and the more you share in it. Let us check up the part which you as a boy or girl can have. Let us see what part you are already having.

In the third department — the eating department — you give place to no one. Food is one of the chief joys of life to hungry boys and girls. You want it, you enjoy it, and, as the old phrase goes, it agrees with you. You turn it to the best of use. You grow tall and broaden out each year until you are of age and have reached your natural limit of growth.

In the second department — the buying, preparing, cooking, and serving — you are having an increasing part each year. In the first department — the raising of food — your garden entitles you to a place. There is, then, not a single division in this great world business, except perhaps the buying, where you must wait to take any share until you are grown up. You are in each department now.

If you are partners in a business, you cannot afford not to know about it. The only way an office boy ever works up to a higher position is by finding out all about the departments in which he is working.

A LIFE BUSINESS 5

This book is to tell you about this huge Food Concern, with its powerful silent partners, Nature and Life, and its active agents, of whom each of you is one. It will tell the facts that you must know in order to succeed in your part of the business ; it will show you what other agents are doing and how you can work with them ; it will help you to get the biggest returns out of your partnership and do your utmost to make this great world Food Business succeed.

What is the one business in which every human being must take part?

What are its three departments ?

In how many of its departments have you taken a share ?

How much have you increased in weight since you were born ?

Chapter II The Food Tether

Need for food is a tether which keeps man tied to the land. Cokimbus was able to discover America because he could take in the holds of his ships food enough to keep his crew alive until he reached shore. As often as his men grew discouraged they would begin to figure on the food supply. " We have sailed for so many days and eaten so much food," they would say. " We can sail home safely on the food we have. If we keep on and do not find land, we shall run short of food and die." Just as we are learning to-day that a hungry nation tends toward anarchy, so every explorer of that day knew that a hungry crew was always ripe for mutiny. The success of a voyage depended on whether the leader's faith in the unknown land ahead could hold the balance true against the discouraging pull upon the spirits of his men of a decreasing food supply.

So much food, so many days of life : that is the rule. As a man is held down to earth by the force of gravity, which keeps him from being tossed hither and yon by every wind that blows, so he is held to his home and his everyday life by this tether. It anchors him as firmly as a cord ever held a flying kite.

THE FOOD TETHER 7

You know the story of the old-time giant Antaeus, the famous wrestler, who renewed his strength every time he touched earth. Even so man is held to the land. Hercules overcame the giant by holding him up from the earth. Think what circumstances draw men away from their food supply. War is one ; city life is another ; flood or earthquake or similar natural disasters may be others. We shall talk about some of them later.

Man's tether is longer than that of any other living creature. He owes its length to his adaptable body and his clever mind. In food necessities, as in the matter of climate, he is wonderfully adaptable. Most birds and animals eat only a few kinds of food ; man eats almost anything that any member of the animal world eats. Next to man the English sparrow, the dog, and the cat are said to be most adaptable in their food requirements. Matching the marvelous body machine, which can make use of almost any kind of foodstuff, is the clever mind, which has devised ways to prepare, store, preserv^e, and transport food. The animal eats raw the food which he finds, and eats it at or near the place where he has found it. Man cooks, dries, cans, and in a thousand ways treats his food to meet his needs. His adaptable body lets him travel and dwell wherever the land is fertile ; his ingenious mind enables him to store and carry his food until he is free to encircle the globe.

Peary could reach the north pole because twenty years of study had taught him what food to carry and in what form to carry it so that his men might bear the strain of that terrible arctic journey. He could go far beyond the usual limit of man's travels. He could leave behind fertile lands where food abounded and go into the wilderness, where little or no food could be found.

TRANSPORTING THE ARCTIC RATION

He planned and selected by a standard which we who live at home need not consider. The food had to occupy as little space and be as light in weight as possible. Every added ounce of weight to be carried took just so much from the needed strength of his men ; every foot of the small space on the sledges must be used to the best advantage.

This is what he says about his supplies:

The essentials, and the only essentials, needed in a serious arctic journey, no matter what the season, the temperature, or the duration of the journey — whether one month or six — are

THE FOOD TETHER 9

four : pemmican, tea, ship's biscuit, condensed milk. Pemmican is a prepared and condensed food, made from beef, fat, and dried fruits. It may be regarded as the most concentrated and satisfying of all meat foods.

With these essentials Peary packed his sledges to support their crew of men and dogs for the fifty days' dash for the pole. The bottom layer was of dog pemmican in red tins, covering the entire length and width of the sledge ; then came two layers of biscuit and of crew pemmican in blue tins • then the condensed milk.

The standard daily ration for work on the final sledge journey towards the pole was one pound of pemmican, one pound of ship's biscuit, four ounces of condensed milk, one-half ounce of compressed tea, and six ounces of liquid fuel (alcohol or petroleum).

This made a total of two pounds, four and a half ounces of solids per man per day. ''On this ration," adds Peary, "a man can work hard and keep in good condition in the lowest temperatures for a very long time. I believe that no other item of food, either for heat or muscle building, is needed."

An army can advance from its base of supplies only so far as food can be brought to it. Long ago Napoleon said, "An army travels on its stomach." A friend of mine, who was in Italy as a Red Cross worker at the time of the Austrian surrender, fed in the mountain passes Austrian soldiers who had had no food for five days. No army so poorly provisioned lO FOOD AND LIFE

could hold out. Germany did not believe any army could operate three thousand miles from its base of supplies. Read the army ration of the American soldier in France, the best-fed soldier in the world, and you will see that the despised Yankee taught even the scientific German a lesson in food supply. Compare it with Peary's emergency ration for his fateful fifty days' dash. The total is over four and a half pounds as against Peary's two and a quarter pounds.

The garrison ration of the American soldier was one and a quarter pounds of fresh beef, one and an eighth pounds of flour, one and a quarter pounds of potatoes, and beans, prunes, coffee, sugar, milk, vinegar, salt, pepper, lard, butter, sirup, and baking powder in varying amounts, making a total of about four and a half pounds. Parallel with this list are many substitutes for each article of food. Flour, for instance, is not served by the pound as the grocer would hand it over the counter. That would hardly help the soldier in his food problem. The flour part of the ration appears in bread, hominy, corn meal, crackers, and oatmeal. Prunes are varied with apples, peaches, pears, pineapple, jam, jelly, and "assorted preserves." (The full ration is given on page 164.)

Later we shall talk more about the body ration necessary for continued health and comfort. Now we are interested in the ration as a measure of man's independence. With this amount of food supplied him he could carry on a war anywhere.

Columbus, Peary, and Pershing had to provide a fixed daily allowance, or ration, because they had taken their men off the land — Columbus out on the sea, Peary over the ice, and Pershing into camps or out across No Man's Land, where they could do nothing

U. S. Official

FOOD FOR A DESERT JOURNEY to supply themselves with food. Belgium had to be put on rations because its land was laid waste or was in the hands of the enemy. England went on rations because the land area for food cultivation of the British Isles is not sufficient for the feeding of her population. She depends always on food brought from overseas. Before the war it used to be said that she kept three weeks ahead of her needs in provisions. With submarines sinking the incoming food in mid-ocean, she had to put her people on limited rations. China suffers

THE FOOD TETHER from famine when the floods cover the rice fields. Whenever people are cut off from the land where their food is raised,. the tether pulls them back.

It has been good for man to be pulled up short in this way. Otherwise he might have become a careless, idle, roaming creature. It is good for you that you must report three times a day at table. Many a time you go out saying " I will be back in time for supper " or " for dinner." As the farmer is held to the land which he tills, so all of us are blessedly held to our homes and our work by our need for food.

How is man tied to the land ?

How has he lengthened his tether ?

Why must any people ever be put on rations ?

Chapter III In Business For Yourself

Mr. Smith was a candy manufacturer. His son John wanted to go into the business, and Mr. Smith wanted to take him into it. But he wanted John to learn the candy business before he became his partner. So he said to John : " How would it be for me to set you up in business for yourself ? I will give you a little factory for your own. I will put in the machinery and buy the supplies to start you. Then you can go ahead and manage it." John wanted the factory. He was eager for the chance. But he did not think that he knew enough about the actual making of the candy to risk it. Mr. Smith saw that John was right. " I will do more," he said. " I will give you one of my best foremen. He knows all about the process of making candy. He will attend to that for you, and your mind will be left free for the other parts of the business."

Nature did the same thing for you that Mr. Smith did for his son. She set you up in business for yourself. She gave you the most w^onderful machine in the world — your body. It belongs to you and to no one else. You are in full charge. But Nature did not go away and leave you the whole business of managing it. If you had consciously to manage and direct the

IN BUSINESS FOR YOURSELF various activities that are going on all the time within your body, you would have no time or thought for anything else. You would be nearly distracted sending your thoughts here and there to see that your heart kept beating, and your lungs kept breathing, and your blood kept moving, and your whole body kept growing. Attending to the food business alone would drive you crazy, for it goes on night and day, Sundays and holidays.

Nature wished your thinking self to be free for other things than the running of your body. So, like Mr. Smith, she gave you a foreman. This foreman is your Other Self ; it is really You, for it is part of You, but so, for that matter, is your body You. It is not, however, the thinking, attending, conscious You. It is a Body Self which knows how to run the mechanical processes of your body, and which attends to them whether you are paying attention or not.

We stopped in the middle of Mr. Smith's talk with his son. Mr. Smith was willing to provide John wath a foreman, but said: "If you are to be a successful candy manufacturer, you must know every step of the process of candy-making. You must watch the foreman and each worker, and question them until you know exactly what takes place in each room of the factory. You must know not only the raw products (sugar, milk, water, flavoring) and the finished products (candy in pound and five-pound boxes) but also how they are mixed, heated, cooled, molded, and packed. No man is fit to be at the head of a business who does not have every detail of that business clearly in his mind. He will make mistakes in buying his materials, selling his products, or handling his employees."

It was not hard for John to learn the business. He could go and ask his foreman questions. If man's Body Self had been able to talk, science would have been saved thousands of experiments. But though the Body Self attended to its business and did it well, it kept so quiet about it that the endless curiosity of man down all the centuries hardly suf^ced to find out how the food business inside his own body was run.

People had such strange ideas. Philosophers used to sit down and try to imagine what could be happening to this food which they ate. Each day they ate it, and it disappeared. The body into which it was dropped took it in but did not increase in weight. No other vessel could have a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of matter dropped into it in a year and, except for some waste, give no sign of what became of it. In some way it kept the body alive, but how they could not imagine.

Then came a brilliant group of men who made the body tell some of its secrets. One discovered the circulation of the blood, the river of life flowing into every part of the body. Two others discovered oxygen, that element in the air which combining with other substances " makes them burn." Year after year secrets were uncovered until now you and I can almost hear our Body Selves talk if we let the scientists act as interpreters.

IN BUSINESS FOR YOURSELF

Suppose this Body Self did talk. It might like to tell you, as its chief, some things. Foremen are always going to their chiefs with requests and suggestions. It might even begin by complaining. It might say to you:

" Do you realize the work you are making me do ? I must keep your heart beating ; that alone is as much

THE NOON LUNCH AT AN OPEN-AIR SCHOOL Food furnishes heat-energy to keep these children warm

work in a single day as it would be to lift a man twenty-five hundred feet into the air. I must keep your chest moving. I must keep your body w^arm. All these things I must do, and then I must be ready to supply energy for everything you do. If you kept still I should even then have work enough to do, but you walk and run, you dig in the garden. Sometimes it seems to me as if you were never still a minute."

l8 FOOD AND LIFE

You do work your foreman hard. You expect a great deal of your body ; you are always calling on it for energy. This you may do because you supply it with food. Your foreman will not complain if you give him the materials he needs. He will not waste them ; he will even save and store some of them. But he must have them if he is to supply you with the energy you need, first, to keep your body machinery running and, next, to do the work you want to do. This energy your foreman would measure in terms of heat, for heat is a form of energy, and it is heat-energy which keeps your body going.

Paracelsus, a Swiss physician who was born the year after Columbus discovered America, thought there really was a spirit that lived in the stomach and separated the food, the good from the bad. If there were such a spirit living in the stomach, he would not be separating good from bad. First of all he would be testing your food to see how much heat-energy there was stored in it. Each tiny cell in the body is a little furnace. The foodstuff which comes to it from your eating is the " coal " ; the oxygen which comes to it through the lungs from your breathing '' makes it burn." When coal burns in a stove, carbon in the coal is uniting with oxygen of the air, and as a result energy is given off in the form of heat. Shut off the oxygen, the draft of air, in a stove and the coal will not burn. Let in air through a wide-open draft without putting in much coal and the fire will burn out. The oxygen from your

IN BUSINESS FOR YOURSELF 1 9

lungs is ready to meet in the cells the food liquid from your stomach and " burn " in each of a million cells. Then from each of these cells will come the heat-energy which is needed not only to keep your heart beating but to enable you to run and jump and play and work.

This Paracelsus-spirit, sitting in your stomach and watching the food as it came down from your mouth, would have for one of his instruments a food thermometer. It would not be quite like our thermometers. They test temperature by seeing how high a thread of mercury rises. This spirit in the stomach would be testing to see how much heat could be gotten out of each bit of food when it met oxygen in the cells.

When the scientist found out that one of the chief things the body wanted from food was possible heat-energy, he began to test every kind of food for heat-energy. He had it meet oxygen in his tube as it would meet oxygen in the cell. He found that each food responded by giving out a particular amount of heat. So he said to himself : " I will make a food thermometer and measure the food before I put it into the body. Then I shall know how much heat it will give out in the body." He called his food thermometer by the less familiar name of caioritnefer, but the two words really mean the same, each being a " heat-measure " — Ikermomeie^r from the Greek word for heat, ^^/(Crimeter from the Latin word for heat.

That was a great day when men found out how to measure food as if it were fuel. After that they could find out how much fuel the body needed. When they had done that, and learned some other facts, explorers and aviators could plan their emergency rations, the army could select intelligently its fighting ration, and you and I could run our food business properly, giving our bodies the materials they need.

How did Nature set you up in business ? What becomes of much of the food we eat ?

In what sense may we call the body an engine ? What does it do for us ?

For what does the body test the food we give to it ?

Chapter IV Food As Fuel

It is one thing to drop food into a mysterious cavitylike the leather bag of Jack the Giant Killer; it is quite another to supply fuel for a furnace from which a known amount of heat is required. Jack's only concern was that the giant should see a certain amount of food disappear. He could throw in all kinds, hit or miss, the faster the better. Sometimes we are in danger of treating our bodies as if they were Jack's leather bag. Then we do well to remind ourselves that they are furnaces or engines, with food as their fuel. They can be misused more than most furnaces without getting out of order, but even their fires will finally run low if not fed properly or if choked.

We know how much heat we require from the body furnace. Many thousands of tests have established that, until it is a matter of arithmetic like the price of beef or eggs. Do a certain piece of work and you use up a certain number of calories of heat. The calorie is the unit of heat as it is measured by the food thermometer, or calorimeter. Get up from the chair in which you are now sitting, walk eight feet, turn, walk back, and sit down "again ; you will have used about one calorie of heat more than if you had kept still. A certain number of calories to keep the body going, a smaller number in addition for our voluntary acts like walking, stretching, eating, running, and playing, — such is the requirement for fuel for our body furnace. Every muscle movement that we make uses a certain amount of heat-energy. Boys and girls use up more calories in proportion to their weight than men and women. That is partly because they are growing so fast, partly because they are more active. Here is a table ^ by which you can find out for yourself the number of calories of heat-energy which you require from your body in a day.

Age

Number of Calories per Day

Under i year

1-2 years

2-5 years

6-g years

10-13 years

14-17 years

To figure out what you require, find your place in the table by age and multiply your weight in pounds by the number of calories opposite your age. Since two numbers are given in the calorie list, multiply first by the first number given, then by the second ; somewhere between these two results lies your average daily requirement. Suppose you are ten years old and weigh 60 pounds. In the table, for children from