Page:Wood - Foods of the Foreign-Born.djvu/40

24 cost and more difficulty in securing, the Italians otten have a poorly-balanced diet and run short in some of the most important food elements.

The Italian children are given the adult's diet as soon as they are out of swaddling clothes. The larger the abdomen, the stronger and healthier the mother considers the child. A diet of milk, strained cereal, and fruit juices is unknown to an Italian mother. Too large an amount of macaroni or rice and lard are usually included in the diet, and often the children suffer from constipation because of this excess of starch, with few vegetables and little fruit.

The children learn to take tea and black coffee, and bread without butter, for breakfast. Usually this means a meal of 200 to 250 calories, composed of carbohydrates, instead of one of 500 calories, such as they should have obtained from a combination of protein, carbohydrates, mineral matter, and fats. At noon the meal often consists again of bread with a piece of bologna, and more tea or coffee.

At night, or supper time, comes the big meal of the day, which, as in their native country, is started in the morning and cooked either in one large kettle or in several small ones, the contents being put into one in the last process of preparation.

The Italian woman, when she does cook a meal, spends much time and care, and the results are very appetizing. This fact gives encouragement, showing what an apt pupil she would be if taught early on her arrival how to market, what raw food materials like those of her home country can be secured, what substitutes can be used, and what a day's dietary—breakfast, dinner, and supper—should contain, and why.