Chemistry for Digestion.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1824, 15 March 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Chemistry for Digestion.

(From the Scientific American.) In all lands, and in all ages, the instinctive cravings of the human system have demanded and have eventually succeeded in obtaining as an article of food something which should give such a combination of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, with oxygen as 13 not readily accessible in any form of food of natural production. The savage, in temperate or cold climates, may subsist almost exclusively on flesh cr nBh, and in the tropical regions on vegetables and fruits, as they grow. But it is only the savage who does this. The first elevation from the savage state lifts him above such things and such simplicity of diet. He makes a combination, though without knowing the chemical reapons for it. The combination takes various forms and names, but it serves the same purpose, or aims to do so. For us the name is bread, and no nations can be reckoned who have not been so dependent on that which has been to them what bread is to us. as that it should merit the name we so often give it, " The Staff of Life." And the more advanced the nation has become, the more has their type of bread grown into importance, and the more complete its preparation. The title of " bread winner " given to the supporter of the family but serves to show how absolutely the article is understood to satisfy the wants of the system. We will not discuss the types as they exist in the present age, here and there, throughout the world. Our purpose is a more practical one. It may do us no harm t<? just give a thought or two to our bread ; to see what it is that we eat, and how near it cornea to being the article which we fondty hope it is, and at any rate to consider what it ought to be, only supposing that human nature was honest. We are very gravely told that our children should have bread and milk, or its equivalent, as the main article of their diet for the first four to six years after weaning, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Like a great many other of the sagacious plans for bringing up all children on one system by one rule, this may theoretically have some basis in truth. But alas ! we are often disappointed. " Things are not what they seem," and while we flatter ourselves that the child is building up its strength and vigor, it is on the contrary only laying the foundation for a lifetime of weakness and suffering because of the very bread on which our hopes were placed. It is an actual fact, as all physicians of skill and experience now recognise, that in most of our families at the present time the head is about the first aiticle which needs watching in cases where weakness of digestion requires the observance of strict regimen in diet. And it is also true that a very large part of the horrors of dyspepsia, of which we hear so much and from which a fearful proportion of the community are constantly suffering, are due in a great degree to bread, that is, to the various forms in which it comes to us, either under its own name or in the guise of its various substitutes — griddle cakes (ad infmitum, from buckwheat down — or up), hot biscuits, hot rolls, muffins, waffles, etc., etc. The evils which this array of breakfast diet especially have produced are already telling fearfully on the nation. To find a stomach thoroughly vigorous and perfect in its functions is in most classes and most communities an exception, and the bread supply has really been, and is, responsible for a large part of the evil. In great measure this sad state of things has sprung from our rapid growth as a nation springing up in the wilderness. This has not only caused the national habit of eating rapidly, but has associated with it the equally widespread habit of preparing the bread food as rapidly, that is, extemporaneously, and consuming it on the instant. We have been taught to consider it scarcely hospitable to set before a guest at the breakfast table cold bread. If we cannot give him something hot with which to poison himself we apologise, and if the guest is an Amerioan he accepts the apology and is sorry for us— and for himself. The evil result of this has become as truly national as the habit itself. A few words as to the chemistry which the matter of the hot bread involves may serve to set the evil and the danger in a clearer light. We will assume the bread in all cases to be made from a mixture of flour and water; we will say nothing of the other ingredients, for these two only are to the purpose. Such a mixture taken into the stomach in the state of a raw paste is almost absolutely indigestible. It becomes a solid mass, whose fermentation is full of danger. If, on the contrary, it is cooked, say baked, it forms a firm, hard substance which can be eaten, as we know, for a time, but which few persons choose to eat in continuance. What we Jdo, therefore, is to puff up the paste of flour and water by means of an elastic gas, and it is largely in the changes connected with this gas and its development that the evil resides. If it is formed properly, and the formation finished, wholesome bread is the result. There are, however, two sources of danger here indicated, only one of which we can at this moment consider — that is, that process i« not completed. Here is where the whole evil of hot bread in all its evil shapes reaches its culmination. The changes in chemical composition, with the molecular structure necessarily connected with them, which are required to transform paste into dougb, do not cease when that dough is baked, and has thus become bread. They continue for quite a time afterward, and until they have entirely ceased the material has not become what it ought to be — bread easy of digestion. It is a burden to any storaaoh, to a weak one it is simply poison. Here in a few words is the source of unbounded difficulty and suffering. Hot bread, in any, form, whatever, .ought never to be eaten. .Some forms are very, much worse than other's, but all are bad, and should in reason be banished from every table. The

manner in which the changes are wrought we may oonsidor at another time.