Food
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Food. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
any substance taken into the body to assist or nourish life. Foods may be classified as gaseous, liquid, and solid. Air is a gaseous food. The oxygen which it contains is absolutely essential to life. Death results from lack of oxygen. Viewed in this light, smothering or want of air is a speedy form of starvation. The liquid necessary to life is water. In one sense of the word water is not a food. It serves as a carrier. Particles of soild food are swept along in its currents through the arteries to all parts of the body. It also serves to render the various organs elastic. A muscle deprived of water becomes stiff and useless; a bone deprived of water becomes brittle--a mere white powder in fact. Under solid foods, we must include the solid particles held in solution in coffee, tea, cocoa, milk, soup, and the like. Solid foods are classified usually as nitrogenous or tissue-making, non-nitrogenous or heat-making, and mineral foods. The nitrogenous foods are also called proteids. They form the muscles, bones, and other organs of the body. Milk, fish, eggs, meat, articles of food formed from flour and meal, peas, and beans are the chief tissue builders. They yield the food needed for growth and strength. The non-nitrogenous or heat-giving foods include the sugars, starches, fats, and oils. The first two are called carbohydrates, because they are compounds of carbon and water. Sugar and starch are found chiefly in the various vegetables, fruits, cereals, sugars, and gums. The fats and oils are obtained from both animal and vegetable sources, as butter, cream, the fat of meat, fish, cereals, nuts, and olives. The non-nitrogenous foods supply the heat and energy of the body. Pound for pound, the fats and oils supply twice as much heat as the carbo-hydrates. They also form the fatty tissue of the body. Fleshy people should avoid their use. The principal minerals required by animals are lime, phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, sodium, magnesium, and iron. They are found in milk, oatmeal, beef, and many other articles of food. The only strictly mineral food in popular use is common salt. Substances that destroy life instead of sustaining it are called poisons. Substances that produce nervous or muscular action without providing food material are called stimulants. The make-up of our food is of importance. The proportion of the various elements yielded by some of our standard ar-articles is shown in the following table. Waste refers to any portion that is not digested and utilized. Substance Waste Water Tissue Fat and Fuel Mineral Sirloin steak . . . . . . 12.8 54.0 16.5 16.1 .9 Mutton . . . . . . 18.4 51.2 15.1 14.7 .8 Bacon . . . . . . 7.7 17.4 9.1 62.2 4.1 Turkey . . . . . . 22.7 42.4 16.1 18.4 .8 Fresh fish . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.7 10.1 7.1 2.1 Eggs . . . . . . 11.2 65.5 13.1 9.3 .9 Milk . . . . . . . . . . .. 87.0 3.3 9.0 .7 Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . 36.0 28.4 31.1 4.5 Oatmeal . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 16.7 73.5 2.1 Corn meal . . . . . . 3.3 12.5 7.8 75.7 .8 White bread . . . . . . . . . . . . 35.3 9.2 54.4 1.1 Sugar Green corn . . . . . . . . . . . . 75.4 3.1 20.8 .7 Potatoes . . . . . . 20.0 62.6 1.8 15.8 .8 Turnips . . . . . . 30.0 62.7 .9 5.8 .6 Apples . . . . . . 25.0 63.3 .3 11.1 .3 Strawberries . . . . . . 5.0 85.0 .9 7.6 .6 Hickory nuts . . . . . . 62.2 1.4 5.8 29.8 .8 The following allowance is considered a fair and well balanced ration for an average man at moderately muscular work: Article Pounds. Bread 50 Butter 12 Potatoes 75 Cheese 12 Beans 12 Milk 2.00 Sugar 20 Meat 25 Oatmeal 12 Total in pounds . . . . . . 4.38 In computing the amount of food needed by a family, authorities regard the food required by an ordinary man at moderate work as a unit. That is to say, starting with the food or ration of the foregoing table, as a unit, they consider that: Units Man at hard muscular work requires 1.2 Man at light muscular work, or boy 15-16 years old 0.9 Man at sedentary occupation, woman at moderately active work, boy 13-14, or girl 15-16 years old 0.8 Woman at light work, boy 12, or girl 13-14 years old 0.7 Boy 10-11, or girl 10-12 years old 0.6 Child 6-9 years old 0.5 Taking market prices into account, we may see that five cents invested in oatmeal, twenty-five cents in sirloin, and fifty cents in fish, yield about equal amounts of nourishing food. The commissary department of the United States army enters into contracts for the regular supply of provisions. The following list represents a portion of the supplies required every ten days. It is by no means a complete list, but it gives a pretty good idea of the articles entering into the regular army ration: Pounds. Beans 105,000 Beef 875,000 Bacon 525,000 Canned meats 700,000 Coffee 70,000 Corn meal 875,000 Dried fruits 70,000 Onions 560,000 Potatoes 560,000 Pickled fish 787,500 Sugar 140,000 The daily ration of a United States soldier in the Spanish-American War was the following: Bread or flour. . . . . 22 oz. Fresh or salt beef (or pork or bacon 12 oz.). . . . . 20 oz. Potatoes (three times a week). . . . . 16 oz. Rice. . . . . 1.6 oz. Coffee (or tea 0.24 oz.). . . . . 1.6 oz. Sugar. . . . . 2.4 oz. Beans. . . . . 6.4 oz. Vinegar. . . . . 32 gill Salt. . . . . 16 gill The adulteration of food by mixing cheaper substances with the real article has become one of the crying evils of the day. Most states have passed pure food laws forbidding the manufacture or sale of impure food. State chemists are employed to test the articles of food offered for sale. One of the most common adulterations in that of milk with water. Butter is offered for sale containing lard, cheese, flour, chalk, excessive salt, gypsum, alum, glucose, cotton-seed oil, borax, and dyes. Cheese is adulterated with fats and potato flour; bread, with alum; flour, with cheaper meals; candy, with starch and sawdust. Coffee is ground up with peas, beans, tanbark, sawdust, and starch. Tea is mixed with the leaves of the basswood, sage, strawberry, and old tea grounds. Sugar refineries use glucose. Strained honey may be half syrup and sugar. Flour, potato, meal, sawdust, mutton tallow, and oil are sold in cocoa and chocolate. Mustard is reduced with flour and starch. Cheap jellies and jams are pretty sure to contain glucose, gelatine, and glue. The difficulty of controlling interstate shipments of food supplies has led Congress to enact a pure food law. It is hoped that cooperation between national and state governments, together with rigid city inspection of milk and other articles of local production, may bar unfit food from the market. According to government investigations, the average cost per workingman's family in the United States of principal articles of food during one year is shown in the following table: Fresh beef $50.05 Salt beef 5.26 Fresh hog products 14.02 Salt hog products 13.89 Other meat 9.78 Poultry 9.49 Fish 8.01 Eggs 16.79 Milk 21.32 Butter 28.76 Cheese 2.62 Lard 9.35 Tea 5.30 Coffee 10.74 Sugar 15.76 Molasses 1.69 Flour and meal 16.76 Bread 12.44 Rice 2.05 Potatoes 12.93 Other vegetables 18.85 Fruit 16.52 Vinegar, pickles, and condiments 4.12 Other food 20.40 Total. . . . . $326.90 See Starvation ; Poison ; Medicine ; Wages Brook trout. Food fishes Sturgeon. Food fishes Silver carp. Dace. Food fishes
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
any substance which, taken into the body, is capable of sustaining or nourishing, or which assists in sustaining or nourishing the living being. Foods may be classed under three heads, gaseous, liquid, and solid, the first two consisting of the air we breathe-the oxygen of which is so essential to life and the water we drink. Milk, tea, coffee, cocoa, etc., are popularly called liquid food, but each of these is simply water in which various solid substances are dissolved, or held in suspension. The solid foods are of three kinds - viz., nitrogenous, nonnitrogenous, and mineral. Nitrogen compounds, or flesh formers, are essentially composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. They possess the only ingredients capable of building up and repairing the nitrogenous tissues of the body, but they also furnish a limited supply of heat, especially when heat-giving compounds are deficient in the body. Nitrogenous compounds are found both in the animal and veg vegetable kingdoms under the forms of albumen, fibrin, casein, gelatine, and chondrin. Non-nitrogenous compounds, or heat givers, sometimes called carbonaceous compounds, are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. They serve to keep up the heat of the body, and so produce energy or force; but they contribute, also, to the repair and growth of the body. The chief heat givers are starch (abundant in the cereal grains), sugar, and fat. None of these substances will of itself sustain life. The mineral foods are the salts of soda and potash, the phosphates of lime and magnesia, iron, etc. As the daily waste of the body must be met by a daily supply of nourishment, it becomes of the utmost importance that such supply should consist of both flesh formers and heat givers, and in the proportion of two parts of the former to six of the latter. The National Pure Food Law, which went into effect in the United States Aug. 1, 1900, was aimed against ADULTERATION (q. v.). See NUTRITION; CONSERVATION OF FOOD. The food of animals is not directly derived from inorganic nature, but mediately through the agency of plants. Plants can feed on and assimilate inorganic matter, in this respect differing from animals. A few plants, however, such as fungi, the sundew (Drosera), and Venus' fly trap, require animal food. The ordinary food of plants consists of carbon, water, and nitrogen.