Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1885 — A Dietary Blunder. [ARTICLE]

A Dietary Blunder.

Sir Henry Thompson writes: “Most persons might naturally be aware that the primary object of drink is to satisfy the thirst, which means a craving for the supply of water to the tissues—the only fluid they demand and utilize when the sensation in question is felt. Water, is a solvent of solids, and is more powerful to this end when employed free from admixture with any other solid mate rial. It may be flavored, as in tea and otherwise, without imparting its solvent power, but when mixed with any concrete matter, as in chocolate, thick cocoa, or even with milk, its capacity for dissolving—the Very quality for which it was demanded—is in great part lost. So plentiful is nutriment in solid food that the very last p’ace where we should seek that quality is the drink which accompanies the ordinary meal. Here, at least, we might liope to be free from «an exhortation to nourish ourselves, when desirous only to allay thirst or moisten our solid morsels with a draught of fluid. Not soT there are ~even some persons who must wash down their ample slices of roast beef with draughts of new milk—an unwisely devised combination even for those of active habit, but for men and women whose lives are little occupied by exercises, it is one of the greatest dietary blunders which can be perpetrated. One would think it was generally known that milk is a peculiarly nutritive fluid, adapted for the fast growing and fattening young mammal—admirable for such, for our small children; also serviceable to those whose musular exertion is great, and, when it agrees with the stomach, to those who can not take meat. For us who have long ago achieved our full growth, and can thrive on solid fare, it is altpgether superfluous and mostly mischievous as a drink.”