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If the children are fortunate enough to live in the
country they will feel especially at home when they come to the third booth,
for there are the cereals, wheat, rye, corn, rice, oats, barley, and
buckwheat, most of them ground into flour or meal. Of course, these are not
so interesting in their boxes and bags as when they were growing in the
fields, but they must be looked upon with profound respect, for throughout
the greater part of the world people eat more cereals than any other one
kind of food. They are the cheapest of the fuel foods, they are easy to
raise, and they are convenient to store away because they are almost dry and
they do not spoil easily. A wise man once said that he hated to see anything
take up more room than it was worth, but he would never heave said that of
cereals.
From cereals we get most of our starchy food, and the chief
business of this is to supply us with energy. It has been kindly planned for
us that, even if we cannot get food from the group best adapted to supply
some special need of our bodies, food of another group may answer the
purpose to some degree. The foods in the second group are the best providers
of protein, but the cereal foods also will give us much of the protein that
we need.
The green things growing are a wise folk. They act as if they
understood just what was best for themselves and also for the little plants
that are to follow them. If you look at a kernel of corn, you will see,
close to the end which clings to the cob, a small, yellowish part which
often slips out when one is eating green corn. This part is called the
embryo, or germ, and it contains the life of the kernel. It is always in a
hurry to begin to grow, and if it is only given some water and left quietly
in a dark, warm place, it will set to work promptly. Nothing can grow
without food, however, plants no more than babies, and the mother plant has
looked out for this very moment. The embryo itself contains protein and fat;
but she has carefully packed this embryo into the kernel, and most of the
kernel is made up of starch and other materials, which are just the proper
food to give the embryo energy to push out of the kernel, produce its little
roots and leaves, and set up for itself in the world. This is the early life
not only of corn, but of all the grains.
In the olden times beautiful stories arose from the facts of
nature, and gradually became part of the religion of the people. They taught
their children that Mother Earth, or Ceres, brought forth grain from the
ground for them. They worshipped her and made offerings to induce her to
give them generous harvests. They made statues of her as a kind and gracious
woman, bearing a horn of plenty filled to overflowing with golden sheaves of
grain. They delighted in the story that Pluto, king of the underworld, once
stole away her little daughter to make her his queen. He gave her jewels and
all the precious treasures that are found in the earth, but still she was
sad and longed for her mother and the sunshine o fthe upper world; and at
length the king of the Gods declared that the little daughter might spend
half of every year with Ceres above ground; that is, putting it into the
language of to-day, the kernel of grain spends part of the year underground
and part in the air and sunshine. It is perhaps because of this myth of
Ceres that we picture autumn, the harvest time, as a woman bearing sheaves
of grain or ears of corn. Whittier wrote:
"Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!"
The grains take their name of cereals from Ceres. To us corn
means Indian corn or maize, but it is really another name for grain, and in
other countries is often given to the kind of grain that is most familiar
there. To many Englishmen an "ear of corn" would mean a head of wheat; to
the Scotchman, oats; to the Scandinavian, rye. In the Old Testament story of
Joseph's brothers coming to Egypt to buy "corn" because there was a famine
in their own country, "corn" means wheat or millet, and not the maize of
America. Originally "corn" meant kernel, and this is its meaning in the
words of Jesus, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone."
Cereals are all good manufacturers of starch, but they need
sunshine, and our American corn especially needs the sun. That is why hot,
sunny days are called "good corn weather." The starch in cereals is closely
packed into tiny cells with thin walls of cellulose, the substance that
gives plants their form and stiffens their stems. The stems are older than
the twigs, and therefore, contain more cellulose; that is why they are
stiffer, just as young radishes are tender, but as they grow older, they
form more of this substance and become tough. We do not digest cellulose
readily, but some things are useful even if they are not digested. Cellulose
is one of them, for it helps food to move on through the entire digestive
tract.
Cereals are easy to cook, but they do need to be cooked a long
time. This is because the little cells must be swelled with heat and
moisture till they spread apart and their walls break down and set free the
tiny grains of starch. To save time in cooking, many people buy the prepared
cereals that are half cooked or entirely cooked before they are put on the
market. What are called "rolled oats" are oats steamed and then crushed
between heavy rollers, in order to break down the walls of the cells and set
the starch free.
There is very little difference in the amount of starch or other
materials contained in the different cereals. We have fallen into the habit
of using wheat in its various forms more than the other grains, chiefly
because it makes lighter raised bread, but it is not at all necessary, and
the others will fill its place in the work of feeding the body.
Some fruits and many vegetables contain starch, though not in
nearly so large quantities as the grains. The legumes, for instance, peas,
beans, lentils, and peanuts, besides attending to their chief business as
makers of protein, also manufacture considerable starch. Another name for
the legumes is the butterfly plants, because their blossoms look like little
butterflies with their wings spread. These pretty little plants work hard to
make food for us. They are no "slackers."
Some of the fruits and vegetables which manufacture starch as well
as sugar contain both substances at the same time, and sometimes one changes
into the other. Bananas and apples contain much starch when they are young
and green, and much sugar when they are older. That is why they can be eaten
cooked before they are ripe enough to eat raw. There is a pretty experiment
that can be tried with apples and a few drops of weak iodine, showing the
change of starch into sugar. Cut a half-ripe apple in two at right angles
with the stem, and put a little iodine on the surface. Whenever starch meets
iodine, it turns blue; and the surface of this apple will turn into a deep,
rich blue. Do the same thing later in the season, and although the apple
will be blue, it will not be of nearly so deep a shade. By and by, when the
apple is ripe, you will find that the iodine will bring out hardly a trace
of color. That is, the apple has changed its starch into sugar.
In the shortage of grain, the potato is an excellent substitute.
The potato is a tuber, that is, a part of the stem which grows underground,
thickens, and forms a storehouse which is filled with starch. Every "eye" is
capable of becoming a plant, and in the first place, the potato probably
contained only what starch the eyes would need for their own growth. We have
cultivated the potato, however, and so increased the amount of starch that
it is now of much value for food.
A potato is really very interesting, not nearly so commonplace as
it looks. The courtly Sir Walter Raleigh thought potatoes a gift fit to
bestow upon a queen, and more than three hundred years ago he is said to
have taken some from America to give to Queen Elizabeth. If you cut a thin
slice crosswise from the middle of a raw potato and hold it up to the light,
you will see that it is not the same all the way through. Next to the skin
there is a layer half an inch thick or less that is more nearly transparent
than the rest. From the middle of the potato, irregular rays stretch out
toward the skin in a sort of star. The sweet potato contains much sugar, but
the greater part of both white and sweet potatoes is made up of little
irregular rooms or cells, the walls of which are made of cellulose, and each
cell is a tiny storeroom full of starch.
Chewing even a raw potato will break open the cells and set free
much of this starch, but of course the potato becomes far more palatable if
it si cooked. There is much water in a potato, and heat will expand it and
break the cells apart, and the little grains of starch will swell; and now
the tuber is more fit for food and will give a generous supply of energy. If
you happen to be a Boy Scout, and know how to cook without a stove, you can
roast potatoes out of doors, but you will not carry them on a mountain trip,
because they contain so much water that they are very heavy in proportion to
the amount of nourishment in them. That is why potatoes are not so good to
send across the ocean as the grains, which contain little water and are
almost solid food.
It is worth
remembering:
That most of our starchy food comes from cereals.
That cereals are the cheapest source of energy; but must be
thoroughly cooked.
That there is little difference in the food value of the various
cereals.
That some fruits and vegetables manufacture starch as well as
sugar.
That the potato is a good substitute for grain.
That if you eat more peas and beans you will not need so much
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