No other food supplies our bodies with the _drive_, the vigor, which
fat gives. No other food has been given so little study in proportion
to its importance.
Here are interesting facts, yet few housewives are acquainted with
them:
Fat contains more than twice the amount of energy-yielding power or
calorific value of proteids or carbohydrates. One half our physical
energy is from the fat we eat in different forms. The excellent book,
"Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent," by Fannie Merritt
Farmer, states, "In the diet of children at least, a deficiency of fat
cannot be replaced by an excess of carbohydrates; and that fat seems
to play some part in the formation of young tissues which cannot be
undertaken by _any other constituent of food_...."
The book entitled "The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning," by the two
authorities, Ellen H. Richards and S. Maria Elliott, states that the
diet of school children should be regulated carefully with the fat
supply in view. Girls, especially, show at times a dislike for fat.
It therefore is necessary that the fat which supplies their growing
bodies with energy should be in the purest and most inviting form and
should be one that their digestions _welcome_, rather than repel.
[Illustration]
The first step in the digestion of fat is its melting. Crisco melts
at a lower degree of heat than body temperature. Because of its low
melting point, thus allowing the digestive juices to mix with it, and
because of its vegetable origin and its purity, Crisco is the easiest
of all cooking fats to digest.
When a fat smokes in frying, it "breaks down," that is, its chemical
composition is changed; part of its altered composition becomes a
non-digestible and irritating substance. The best fat for digestion
is one which does _not_ decompose or break down at frying temperature.
Crisco does not break down until a degree of heat is reached _above_
the frying point. In other words, Crisco does not break down at all
in normal frying, because it is not necessary to have it "smoking hot"
for frying. No part of it, therefore, has been transformed in cooking
into an irritant. That is one reason why the stomach welcomes Crisco
and carries forward its digestion with ease.