per cent. of solid nutriment and 75 per cent. of water. If lean beef be
desiccated, one pound will be reduced to four ounces of perfectly dry
substance; this will consist of about 80 per cent. of proteid matter and
nearly 20 per cent. of fat including a little saline matter and the
extractives. This is as far as it is possible to concentrate the beef. If
it were possible to remove, without interfering with the nutritious
constituents, the membraneous matter, the creatin, creatinine and purin
bodies, we should reduce it to a little less than four ounces. It is very
remarkable that the most nutritious matter of the beef, the muscle
substance or proteid and the fat, are rejected in making Liebig's extract,
whilst the effete or waste products are retained. In Bovril and some other
preparations, some meat fibre has been added with the object of imparting
a definite food value. Hence in some advertisements, now withdrawn, it was
alleged that the preparations were immensely superior in nutritive value
to ordinary meat extracts. The Bovril Company extensively circulated the
following:--"It is hard for ladies to realise that the beef tea they make
at home from the choicest fresh beef contains absolutely no nourishment
and is nothing more than a slight stimulant. It is so, however, and many a
patient has been starved on beef tea, whether made from fresh beef or from
the meat extracts that are sold to the public. From these Bovril differs
so much that one ounce of its nutritious constituents contains more real
and direct nourishment than fifty ounces of ordinary meat extract." If
analyses of meat extracts are referred to, it will be seen that the
principal part of Bovril is the meat bases and other things common to all
such extracts, and which the Company in their circular so emphatically
condemn. If the meat fibre, which is the principal, if not the sole
difference, is the only nourishing constituent, it is difficult to see the
advantage over ordinary beef, which can be procured at a very small
proportionate cost. Concerning this added meat fibre, C.A. Mitchell, in
"Flesh Foods," writes: "As this amounts to at most some 8 or 10 per cent.,