Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/187

Rh of the problem of economically converting corn and similar products into human food which will be palatable and nourishing. A good beginning has already been made in the manufacture of starch and glucose as well as breakfast flakes from corn. These and similar industries are bound to grow rapidly. Nor is corn the only material which might be appropriated directly as human food and which is used at present little or not at all for that purpose. Oats, barley, rye, soy beans and peanuts and various by-products such as cottonseed and linseed cake might be utilized more largely. Modern science will very likely devise methods for extracting the valuable constituents from these products in such a way that they will be available for human food in an attractive form and nourish man in a state of highest efficiency. Some progress has already been made along this line, but it is barely a beginning.

Does this mean that we shall all in time turn vegetarian? No, there will always be food for domestic animals and meat and dairy and poultry products will always be important items of human diet. The grasses, clovers, straws, stovers, and certain by-products of the refining processes of seeds, etc., will always be directly unavailable as food for man and can probably best be utilized by converting them into animal products of various kinds. The amount of meat consumed, doubtless, will decline and a reduction in this respect may take place without danger and without detriment to the race.

Long ago Daniel, the prophet, and his companions demonstrated the virtue of a simple vegetable diet when they refused to eat the king's meat and wine, provided for the boys of the court, and chose rather pulse and water. At the end of the training period, when the boys were examined, the faces of the Hebrew children were found to be plumper and their minds more alert and keen than those of their companions who had dined more sumptuously, but who had, perhaps, studied less diligently.

The study of human nutrition has not yet produced a simple formula for man's guidance in the selection of his food. Such formulas have been successfully used in the feeding of rats, and the skillful stockman in his feeding operations carefully follows charts and rules provided him by experts on animal nutrition. We may expect that similar rules will obtain more and more in human nutrition and there will be, some time in the future, such a thing as scientific feeding of men.