BREAKFAST.
Workmen, even those who must perform hard labor, are sufficiently
strengthened by coffee and wheat bread in the morning to begin their
work. But to be able to continue it, a more substantial breakfast is
necessary, since coffee and bread alone would only replace what was lost
during the night. On the continent of Europe it is therefore the custom
to take coffee, or milk, and bread very early, and, at about nine or ten
o'clock a more substantial meal, a kind of lunch.
Breakfast is with but few the principal meal of the day; for those,
however, who rise early it is the one taken with the best appetite. This
fact ought to induce all to give attention to this meal; especially
those who early in the morning have worked hard already, and those who,
mindful of the old saying,
"Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,"
intend not to idle away the precious morning hours.
To him who is in the habit of laboring, and who loves to labor, an early
breakfast has a peculiar charm; and, what is yet more important to him,
it tastes well. It is customary with us to eat much bread. Bread has as
its principal constituents, starch and sugar, and if it has been well
baked, a part of the starch is already saccharine, that is, it is nearly
transformed into sugar, thus greatly facilitating the process of
digestion. French naturalists have lately written excellent treatises
about the change which fresh bread undergoes when it becomes old. They
prove that bread is most nutritive, and easiest to digest, when about a
day old.
Bread is changed in our bodies partly into fat, as all food is which
contains starch. But this formation of fat is greatly facilitated, if we
take a little ready-made fat with it. For this purpose we eat butter
with our bread. Hence we see that some people are wrong when they
believe butter to be a mere luxury; on the contrary, butter is a very
important article of food, more especially so to children.
The reason of this is, that the fat performs a conspicuous part in the
human body; it serves to keep up the process of respiration. The oxygen
which is inhaled, decomposes the fat in our body and from it forms water
and carbonic acid. The water evaporates through perspiration; the
carbonic acid is exhaled again. Now, if there is fat in us, this
perspiration and exhalation will diminish it; but this very act of using
up the fat preserves our flesh from being consumed in the process of
producing carbonic acid and perspiration, which, if there were no fat,
would greatly weaken us. Fat, thus to speak, is the spare-money, while
flesh is the capital in the body. Fat itself does not make us strong,
while flesh does. But where there is no fat, the processes of
perspiration and respiration attack our flesh, which, unless abundantly
reinforced, begins to disappear rapidly, while our strength begins to
decrease more and more.
Thence it comes that lean persons eat much, while we often are
astonished to see how little food is taken by fat people. The lean one
has no fat to meet the drain produced by perspiration and respiration;
he breathes and perspires accordingly at the expense of his flesh, and,
therefore, is obliged to continually take in a fresh supply of food. The
fat person, meanwhile, does not live on his capital, the flesh and the
blood, but on his supply of fat; as it were, he pays expenses from his
spare-money, and for this reason loses very little in strength.
From what has preceded, it follows that he who breathes much and
perspires much when at work, must eat much fat-producing food, and
besides add a little ready-made fat; while he who breathes and perspires
little, needs but little of that kind of food. This accounts for the
circumstance that in winter, when the air is denser, and therefore one
inhales more oxygen and thus uses more fat for exhalation, we must eat
more fat food; while in summer every one takes less of it. We know that
in cold countries food is taken which, on account of its containing
great quantities of fat, would in hot climates produce sickness.
A hearty worker perspires much at his labor, and, in consequence of his
increased activity, breathes more than the quiet and sedentary; he must
therefore eat with his breakfast some fat--bacon, etc.--because this
enables him to prevent his flesh and blood from decreasing. His body
will be strong and powerful, and he will at all times be able to earn
with his arm more than his stomach costs him.
But let no one believe, therefore, that fat alone is a means of food,
and, above all, beware of the mistake that ready-made fat is healthier
to eat than fat-producing articles. Fine experiments have been made
about the feeding of animals with fat. The results have shown that fat
taken alone is injurious, and goes off again without having been of any
use to the body; while, on the other hand, fat-producing food greatly
assists the fattening of animals.
He who has seen how geese are fattened, will have a correct idea about
the process of the formation of fat in the human body. A handful of
dough is forced into the mouth and gullet of the goose; during the time
of her fattening she is shut up in so close a space that she can neither
rise nor walk about. The poor creature is thus deprived of evaporation
by perspiration; the process of breathing is rendered very difficult;
and, because she breathes and perspires little, her fat does not change
into carbonic acid and water, but collects in the body in an unusual
manner, until finally the creature is relieved from her pains by being
killed. We see that her fat is nothing else than the transformed starch
of the dough, which remained in the body without being used. If we
should try, however, to feed a goose on pure fat only, she would not
fatten at all, but fall sick. Pure fat must only be taken together with
fat-producing food. The cause of this is, that only a part of the
intestines secretes a juice which can dissolve fat; while the gastric
juice in the stomach does not dissolve the fat at all, but allows it to
float on the surface, as fat does in water.
Our readers will now find it natural that a workman who perspires and
breathes much, should by all means take but little bacon for breakfast;
and this he must eat only on those days when he has much work before
him; and then he must not eat it without bread.