For the sustenance of the body we must recognize that fat is fat, whatever
its flavor. A calorie from butter yields neither more nor less energy than
a calorie from lard or bacon, olive oil or cottonseed oil. The common food
fats are all very well digested if judiciously used--not in too large
quantities, nor over-heated in cooking, and not "cooked into" things too
much as in pastries, rich sauces, and fried foods. Whether we spread our
bread with butter or beef drippings amounts to the same thing in the long
run; the main point is which we are willing to eat.

A change is rapidly coming over our food habits. The price of butter has
been soaring beyond our reach, and the market for "butterine," "nut
margarine," "oleomargarine," or whatever the substitute table fat may be
called, has expanded tremendously. It is excellent household economy to
buy milk and a butter substitute rather than cream or butter. In these
substitutes refined vegetable oils such as cottonseed, cocoanut, and
peanut, and oils derived from beef or lard are so combined or treated as
to produce the desired hardness, and churned with milk or milk and butter
to improve texture and flavor. Lard substitutes are similarly made from
one or more of these fats, but are harder in texture and no attempt is
made to give them a butter flavor by churning with milk. All the fats used
are wholesome and efficient sources of energy for the human machine.

In the absence of butter some other form of fat is desirable in the diet,
because fat is so concentrated a food. There is a limit to the capacity of
the human stomach to hold food. People who live on a diet largely of rice,
which has almost no fat in its make-up, develop characteristically
distended abdomens, because they have to eat such a great quantity of food
to get fuel enough for their day's work. When people are for any reason
put on a milk diet for a considerable time it is customary to put
something into the milk to make it more concentrated, for otherwise they