Nutritional physiology / by Percy Goldthwait Stiles.

  • Stiles, Percy Goldthwait, 1875-1936.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nutritional physiology / by Percy Goldthwait Stiles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    far from the truth. Confections, ice-cream sodas, and other extra foods contribute largely to the ration in many cases. (A four-ounce cake of sweet chocolate may have a value of 600 Calories.1) Glucose.—The glucose of commerce is made from corn- starch by treatment with weak hydrochloric acid, which is afterward neutralized by sodium carbonate, leaving a small percentage of sodium chlorid in the product. The resulting substance contains a considerable quantity of the dextrins—bodies intermediate between starch and sugar —some maltose, and dextrose to the extent of about 50 per cent, of the whole. Such a mixture is hardly to be distinguished from that which exists at a certain stage in the salivary or pancreatic digestion of starch. It is hard to account for the intense popular prejudice constantly manifested against this food product. The only possible objection to its free use is connected with its tendency to induce glycosuria, an effect secured somewhat more read- ily with glucose than with cane-sugar. During the short- age of cane-sugar which prevailed in France in wartime glucose was sweetened by adding a little saccharin and made a fair substitute. Food Accessories.—It is perhaps unnecessary to enlarge upon the service of those compounds which are classed under this head. The double value of the extractives of meat which favor digestion both because of the flavors which they develop and because of their direct action upon the stomach wall has been sufficiently emphasized. The various condiments are believed to have a similar signifi- cance. So far as they season the food so as to make it more acceptable they must evidently promote secretion. Their power to call forth the gastric juice by a purely local effect is not so well established, but they are known to in- crease the blood-flow in the mucous membrane, which must help to sustain the local activities. Tea and Coffee.—These beverages owe what limited 1 C. G. and F. G. Benedict, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1918, clxxix, 153; 1919, clxxxi, 415; 1921, clxxxiv, 436.