Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/357

Rh the purpose of emphasizing the fact that animal foods as a source of energy are necessarily more expensive than plant foods. As a source of protein the comparison would not be so much to the disadvantage of meats.

Of course it is realized that as matters now stand a great deal of our food budget is spent for pure flavor. Flavor in the broad sense is "anything which adds the element of pleasure to a meal." Chemical flavor which affects the olfactory organ or the taste buds serves a useful purpose at times in stimulating the flow of digestive secretions in anticipation of a meal and at times it serves a harmful purpose in causing us to overeat. The appearance of the food either in the parcel or on the table may serve as flavor. The kind of service, the presence of good company or even music come under the same head. If one can digest a meal only when accompanied by these latter kinds of flavors they are perhaps justifiable, but from the standpoint of the national welfare they do not deserve much consideration. Appreciation of food and the full physiological effect of flavor are obtainable by the simple device of getting thoroughly hungry before we eat.

The writer once had occasion to compare the actual food value of a dinner served at "Joe's" on Third Avenue for thirty cents and a five-course dinner served three blocks further west at a cost of three dollars. The advantage in actual food value lay with the former. The difference in cost was due entirely to "flavor."

The state universities of the wheat and corn growing sections of this country with the help and encouragement of the Department of Agriculture have already inaugurated an enthusiastic campaign for the production of better wheat, greater yield of corn per acre, and improved varieties of other food products. The classes in domestic science in public schools are learning food values as few of the present generation had any opportunity to learn them. Similar instruction has been given to working girls in the settlement houses. The time is certainly not far distant when the food manufacturer must keep pace with this rapidly increasing knowledge of food values and must make it possible for the housekeepers to know exactly what energy is stored in the food they buy. Some states, New York, for example, require cattle foods to be so labeled now. Human food may contain anything so long as it is "pure."

The government might well establish a classification of foods such as: (1) Foods which are wholly or chiefly energy-producing; (2) foods which are wholly or chiefly tissue-building and (3) foods which are of use chiefly as flavors. In the first class would belong sugar (which is usually thought of as a flavoring material), cornstarch, olive oil, butter, etc.; in the second would belong eggs, meat, cheese, etc.; and in the third would belong pickles, catsups, sauces, tomatoes. Foods which in