How Starch is Changed into Sugar

The starches can be digested only after they are turned into sugars in the body. If you put salt with sugar or starch, although it will mix perfectly and give its taste to the mixture, neither the salt nor the starch nor the sugar will have changed at all, but will remain exactly as it was in the first place, except for being mixed with the other substances.

Sources of Starch

The starches are valuable and wholesome foods. They form the largest part, both in bulk and in fuel value, of our diet, and have done so ever since man learned how to cultivate the soil and grow crops of grain. The reason is clear: One acre of good land will grow from ten to fifteen times the amount of food in the form of starch in grains or roots, as of meat in the shape of cattle or sheep. Consequently, starch is far cheaper, and this is its great advantage.

Risks of Dirty Milk

The risks from tainting or spoiling are particularly great in the case of milk, partly on account of the dusty and otherwise uncleanly barns and sheds in which it is often handled and kept, and from which it is loaded with a heavy crop of bacteria at the very start; and partly because the same delicateness which makes it so easily digestible for babies, makes it equally easy for germs and bacteria to grow in it and spoil, or sour, it. You all know how disagreeable the taste of spoiled milk is; and it is as dangerous as it is disagreeable. A very large share of the illnesses of babies and young children, particularly the diseases of stomach and bowels which are so common in hot weather, are due to the use of spoiled, dirty milk.

Starches as Fuel

The starches contain no nitrogen except a mere trace in the framework of the grains or roots they grow in. They burn very clean; that is, almost the whole of them is turned into carbon dioxid gas and water.

Virtues and Drawbacks of Meats

Taken all together, the proteins, or meats, are the most nutritious and wholesome single class of foods. Their chief drawback is their expense, which, in proportion to their fuel value, is greater than that of the starches. Then, on account of their attractiveness, they may be eaten at times in too large amounts. They are also somewhat more difficult to keep and preserve than are either the starches or the fats. The old idea that, when burned up in the body, they give rise to waste products, which are either more poisonous or more difficult to get rid of than those of vegetable foods, is now regarded as having no sufficient foundation. Neither is the common belief that meats cause gout well founded.