lamb chop will furnish no more calories than a dish of oatmeal, a piece of
bread an inch thick and three inches square, a large apple or banana, an
egg, five ounces (five-eighths of a cup) of milk, or a tablespoonful of
peanut butter. The fatter meat is the higher its fuel value (providing the
fat is used for food). A tablespoonful of bacon fat or beef drippings has
the same fuel value as a tablespoonful of butter or lard, or as the lamb
chop mentioned above. The man who insists that he has to have meat for
working strength judges by how he feels after a meal and not by the
scientific facts. While in the long run appetite serves as a measure of
food requirement, we can find plenty of instances where it does not make a
perfect measure. Some people have too large appetites for their body needs
and get too fat from sheer surplus of fuel stored in the body for future
needs as fat. If such people have three good meals a day all the time,
there never is any future need and the fat stays. Other people have too
small appetites for their needs and they never seem to get a surplus of
fuel on hand. They live, as it were, from hand to mouth. Anyone accustomed
to eating meat will have an unsatisfied feeling at first after a meal
without meat. The same is true of other highly flavored foods. It is well
for the cook to bear this in mind and serve a few rather highly seasoned
dishes when there is no meat on the bill of fare. A very sweet dessert
will often satisfy this peculiar sensation, and it can be allayed, at
least in part, by the drinking of water some little time after the meal.
Such a sensation will pass away when one becomes accustomed to the change
in diet. It is probably due to certain highly flavored substances
dissolved in the meat juices which are known to be excellent stimulants to
the flow of gastric juice and which are stimulating in other ways. These
have no food value in themselves, but, nevertheless, we prize meat for
them, as is shown by the distaste we have for meat which has its juices
removed. "Soup meat" has always been a problem for the housewife--hard to
make palatable--and yet the greater part of the nourishment of meat is