Page:The Chinese cook book.djvu/222

196 Onion also is valuable as a food.

Too much fat is not healthful for the body.

Man under varying conditions spends different numbers of calories of heat. The following table gives approximately the hourly expenditure of energy of the normal person when asleep, awake, at work, and at rest.

Now, having considered the kinds of food necessary for health, let us see why Chinese food is better than ordinary food.

Meats contain too much nitrogen in proportion to other substances. Vegetables contain everything necessary to sustain life. But a pure vegetable diet has much waste material, such as the cellulose forming the walls of the plant-cells, which is indigestible. Hence when