HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 299, 1 October 1910, Page 6

HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

COCOA AS A BREAKFAST DRINK. Breakfast drinks assume a new importance during the winter months, when, besides a stimulating effect, a heat-producnig quality is required. During summer one takes some warm liquid with breakfast chiefly through force of habit, liking for the taste, and to assuage thirst. On the cold winter mornings, when, after leaving a warm bed, one has become chilled during bathing and dressing, something more is required as the breakfast beverage. Both coffee and tea, through their caffeine and thein, have marked stimulating properties, yet neither are tissue builders, nor are they foods which during digestion are heat-producers. It is the possession of these that make cocoa the ideal breakfast drink. A pure cocoa, free from starch and other adulterations, will contain about 30 per cent of fat, the great heatgiving food, and almost half that

amount of nitrogenous components so necessary for the rebuilding of body tissues. The stimulating effect of cocoa, while not as marked as that of strong tea or coffee, is considerable, and comes chiefly from the same source, caffeine, and from a substance resembling it, called theo-bromine. Cocoa, through its digestibility and freedom from properties that, by overstimulating the brain, excite sleeplessness, is largely supplanting coffee and tea among dyspeptics and people of nervous temperaments. For children, who need little stimulation, but much heat - producing and tissue - building foods, it is the ideal hot beverage. People who lie awake for two or three hours every night after going to bed, and then sleep soundly till morning, will often find that a cup of strong cocoa, with a little toast, at bed-time, will quiet the nerves, and do away with the unpleasant wakefulness. The easy process of digestion necessitated draws the blood away from the brain into the abdominal vessels, and the over-active brain no longer surcharged with blood, will become quiet, and sleep will follow. —By H. H. Riddle, M.8., Camb.