When you are washed, it doesn't take you long to dress; and before you
have finished brushing your hair, you begin to feel as if you were
ready for breakfast. You know just where the feeling is--an empty
sensation near the pit of your stomach, and you don't have to look at
the clock to know that it is breakfast time.
About this time something begins to smell very good downstairs; and
down you go, two steps at a time, and out into the dining-room, or
kitchen. You could do it with your eyes shut, just following your
nose; and it is a pretty good guide to follow, too. If you will just
go toward the things that smell good, and keep away from, or refuse to
eat, those that smell bad, you will avoid a great many dangers, not
only to your stomach, but to your general health; for a bad smell is
one of Nature's "black marks," and you know what they are.
How nice and fresh and appetizing everything looks--the white cloth,
the clean cups and saucers, and the shining spoons and forks. You are
sure that a good breakfast is one of the best things in the world. You
sit down and begin to eat, and everything tastes as good as it looks.
[Illustration: MILK AND SUNLIGHT DON'T AGREE
The early riser can help a great deal by taking the milk bottles
in out of the sun. Milk spoils quickly if it is not kept cool.]
A good breakfast would be an egg, or a slice of bacon or ham, with a
glass of milk,--or two, if you can drink another,--and two or three
slices of bread, or toast, with plenty of butter; and then some cereal
with plenty of cream and sugar, or some fruit, to finish with. A
breakfast like this will give you just about the right amount of
strength for the morning's work. Don't begin with a cereal or
breakfast food; for this will spoil your appetite for your real
breakfast. Cereal has very little nourishment in proportion to its
bulk and the way it "fills you up." Bread or mush or potato alone is
not enough. Any one of these gives you fuel, to be sure; but it gives
you very little with which to build up your body. For that you must
have milk or meat or eggs or fish.
It is most important that children should eat a good big breakfast.
All the hundred-and-one things that you are going to do during the
day--racing, jumping, shouting, studying--require strength to do; and
that strength can be got only out of the power in your food, which is
really, you remember, the sunlight stored up in it.
Sometimes, when you come down in the morning, especially if you
haven't had the windows of your bedroom well open so as to get plenty
of air during the night, you may feel that you are not very hungry for
breakfast. Or perhaps, if you have risen late, or are in a great hurry
to get to school in time, you just swallow a cup of coffee or tea, and
a cracker or a little piece of bread, or a small saucer of cereal.
This is a very bad thing to do, because coffee and tea, while they
make you feel warm and comfortable inside, have very little
"strength," or food value, in them, and simply warm you up and stir up
your nerves without doing you any real good at all. A cracker or a
single piece of bread or one large saucer of cereal has only about one
fourth of the strength in it that you will need for playing or
studying until noontime. So after you have started to school with a
breakfast like this, about the middle of the morning you begin to feel
tired and empty and cross, and wonder what is the matter with
yourself.
Children of your age are growing so fast that they need plenty of
good, wholesome food. They get so hungry that they want to be eating
all the time. For "grown-ups" three times a day is enough; but for you
children, whose bodies use up the food so fast, it is well to take
also a piece of bread and butter, or two or three cookies, or a glass
of milk with some crackers, in the middle of the morning and again
about the middle of the afternoon. It will not hurt your appetite for
dinner or supper, and you won't be wanting to "pick" at cake and candy
and pickles all day long.
How does eating keep you alive and make you grow? Eating is somewhat
like mending a fire. You put wood or coal on the fire, and it keeps
burning and giving out heat; but if you do not put fresh fuel on, the
fire soon goes out. Just so, putting food into your body feeds the
"body fires" and keeps you warm, and at the same time makes you grow.
Of course the "body fires" are not just like those you see burning in
the stove: there are no flames. But there is burning going on, just
the same.
The food you put into your body must be made soft and pulpy before it
can burn in your muscles. Now you can guess what your teeth are for.
They chop, crush, and grind the food; and the tongue rolls it over and
over and mixes it with the moisture in your mouth, until it is almost
like very thick soup. Then you make a little motion with your tongue
and throat, and down it goes.
[Illustration: THE FOOD TUBE
Note the arrows. This is the trip made by every mouthful of
food.]
Where does it go? It is passed down a tube that we call the _food
tube_. While I tell you about it, you can look at the picture and then
try to draw it yourself.
The food goes quickly down the first part of the tube until it comes
to a part much larger than the rest, which we call the _stomach_. Here
it is churned about for a long time, and the meat you have eaten is
melted, or dissolved. Then the food goes on into the next part of the
tube, which has become narrow again. This lower part, which is about
twenty-five feet long, is coiled up just below the waist, between the
large bones that you can feel on each side of your body. These coils
of the food tube, we call the _bowels_.
Winding all around the stomach and bowels are tiny branching pipes
full of blood. They look somewhat like the creepers on ivy, or the
tendrils on grapevines. These suck out the melted food from the
bowels. They take what the body can use, and carry it away in the
blood to all parts of the body. This is the fuel that keeps the "body
fires" going. The tougher parts of the food, which the body cannot
use, are carried down to the lower end of the bowels and pushed out by
strong muscles.
This waste should be passed out from the body once every day and at
the same time each day. In the morning after breakfast is perhaps the
best time. If you do not get rid of it every day, it makes poisons,
which go into your blood and soon make you very sick indeed. You must
keep clean inside as well as outside.