Funny Facts About Food

A good many of our most cherished beliefs about food prove, in the light of scientific investigation,

to be ill founded. There is, for instance, the common belief that milk is mostly water and therefore cannot leave any significant waste mass for the intestines. Actually, milk leaves a great amount of residue—much more than meat or eggs.

Dr. James S. McLester has summarized the investigations of scores of scientists who have delved into the mysteries of food in controlled experiments. It has been found that:

Meat is the most satisfying food in that it calls forth the greatest activity on the part of the stomach.

Milk ranks next to meat. Cooked eggs are more satisfying than raw eggs; the latter leave the stomach rapidly and are not easily digested.

Bread, especially if toasted, has poor appetite-satisfying qualities. Potatoes are only a little higher. Both become much more satisfying, however, if a little butter is used with them, and together they add measurably to the satisfying effect of meat.

Green vegetables are low in satisfying qualities.

A little sugar increases the staying power of meals considerably. A meal taken without sugar remained in the stomach three and a half hours; the same meal with sugar added remained eight hours. Evidence of the value of a light sweet dessert!

If eggs are eaten raw, beat them in order to get full value. Plain raw egg white apparently runs through the system so rapidly that it is hardly digested at all.

Cooking loosens the connective tissue of meat so that the digestive juices reach it more readily. Cooking causes the starch cells of vegetables to burst and become accessible to digestive fluids.

Foods that are most likely to cause distress because of individual sensitivities are, in relative order according to one test involving 500 persons: onions, milk, apples, cabbage, chocolate, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs, fats.

Milk is more easily digested when mixed with other foods; take a cracker with your milk.

The most easily digested form of fat is butter.

Hot fresh breads are just as digestible as cold if they are chewed thoroughly and are properly light in texture.

"You LOOK TERRIBLE, darling! Don't take off another pound!"

When your women friends start complimenting you in this vein you can count yourself a success. Such remarks are complimentary because they are honest. You have smitten the speaker with a sense of guilt—that's what it is, guilt! When you have achieved a slim figure by virtue of diet control, you become a sort of public enemy. You have proved that you can control your weight, and how do you think the pudgy, portly public feels about that?

It feels like pulling you and your slim-lassie figure right down off its offensive pedestal. So you must expect to duck a barrage of remarks and side-comments like these:

"Isn't that frightful diet putting circles under your eyes, dear?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have a terrible time with colds—no resistance, you know."

"I think these streamlined dresses make a woman's figure look awful, don't you?"

"It's marvelous how you've slimmed down, darling—I

just don't dare take off a pound because I do all my own work and need all the energy I can get."

On the other hand, "Haven't you lost weight, my dear?" as a salutation from one woman to another can be a danger sign. It may mean that the speaker has observed a girth increase in the person addressed and is courageously saying what she doesn't think, the social amenities being what they are.

Slender nymph that you are, you'll have to learn to take remarks for their deeper meaning, not at face value. It's fun, though, when you realize that you are an object of envy.

What a blissful inward chuckle you enjoy when a friend complains about the wicked dry cleaner who shrank last summer's dress so she can't squeeze into it this season! Or the woman who keeps gaining weight in spite of the fact that she eats "nothing—just nothing at all, my dear. Heredity, you know!" Or the man who excoriates the railroads because they don't build their seats wide enough to accommodate two people comfortably.

But, as you love your social standing, don't ever let the twinkle in your eye become visible!

Men, the handsome creatures, reduce more for health and efficiency than for beauty but they have the same reducing problems as the ladies.

You will probably need a whole new bag of tricks to get along with host or hostess. After all, when you arc invited to a dinner party you cannot come right out and say, "I'm on a diet." Yes, some people do just that, but we're assuming that you want a repeat invitation some day.

The problem of avoiding the second helping is child's play. Keep talking and eat slowly! Spring a joke or two; pay rapt attention to what the man on your right is saying; get all wrapped up in appreciation of the host's puns. By the time the second serving comes around, most of your first will still be on your plate and you can tackle it with every appearance of zest.

Anyhow, for all you know the hostess is hoping there will be enough left over for a pick-up supper tomorrow evening.

You don't have to consume everything on your plate, either you are now expert in identifying by a single glance of the eye those foods you can eat without undue calorie intake. Polish off the salads, the leafy vegetables, the lean meat. Forego the thick gravies and mashed potatoes rich with butter and cream. Mess around with them a little if you wish, so it will appear that you were just on the voracious verge of attacking them when the dessert course swept your plate from under you. Leave the rolls and the thick pat of butter on your bread-and-butter plate, covered o'er, perhaps, with a neat thatch of camouflaging celery leaves.

Dieting is one place in which you are not entitled to your just desserts, at least the ones into which the hostess pours love and whipped cream. Fancy footwork is called for here. Sometimes you can eat the cake and leave the sugar icing. If it's ice cream, you can dawdle while it melts.

When you're really cornered, whip out the old recipe dodge. Go into ecstasies over the dessert and demand the formula. Get busy scribbling. First thing you know the dessert will have been carried away while the hostess beamingly warns you to be sure not to forget the half teaspoonful of chopped orange rind.

As a gentleman reducer your problem is a little different. Some of the above methods will work for you but you have an added weapon or two in your arsenal. Practically surefire is the trick of tossing an argument bomb. Just mention taxes, the war or the administration. Nobody will notice whether you are eating anything or not. In fact, others may lose their appetites too.

Simplest protection of all is to skimp on breakfast and lunch so you can consume a hearty dinner without upsetting your calorie budget. A single big meal a day is not good physiology, but after all an emergency is an emergency.