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Nutrition for Your Family
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Nutrition is the science that deals with food at work—food on the job for you. Modern knowledge of food at work brings a new kind of mastery over life. When you—and your family—eat the right food, it does far more than just keep you alive and going.
The right food helps you to be at your best in health and vitality. It can even help you to stay young longer, postponing old age. An individual well fed from babyhood has a more likely chance to enjoy a long prime of life. But at any age, you are better off when you are better fed. Food's three big jobs
Body's needs, A to Z
You can put nutrition knowledge to use without being introduced to all of the body's A to Z needs. When daily meals provide sufficiently for the following key nutrients, you can be reasonably sure of getting the rest. Protein
Protein in different foods is made up of varying combinations of 22 simpler materials called amino acids. If need be, the body can make its own supply of more than half of these amino acids. But the remaining amino acids must come ready-made from food. And to get the best use from these special ones, the body needs them all together, either in one food or in some combination of foods. The best quality proteins have all of these especially important amino acids, and worth-while amounts of each. You get top-rating proteins in foods from animal sources, as in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, cheese. Some of these protein foods are needed each day; and it is an advantage to include some in each meal. Next best for proteins are soybeans and nuts and dry beans and peas. When these are featured in main dishes, try to combine them with a little top-rating protein food, if you can. The rest of the protein required will then come from cereals, bread, vegetables, and fruits. Many American-style dishes, such as meat and vegetable stew, egg sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, cereal and milk, are highly nourishing combinations. For in the body's remarkable chemistry, the high-grade proteins team with the less complete proteins in many companion foods and make the latter more useful than if eaten alone. Calcium
For calcium to be used properly, other substances are needed too in right quantities, vitamin D and phosphorus, for example. Many people go through life with bones that are calcium- poor. If a child gets too little calcium in his food or if his bones fail to deposit the calcium properly, then the bones will be smaller than they should be, or malformed as when legs are bent in rickets. Older people who are calcium-poor may have brittle bones that break easily and mend slowly. Whether you are young or old, it's a good thing for diet to be calcium- rich. The outstanding food for calcium is milk. You can hardly get enough calcium without using a good deal of milk in some form. Next-best foods for calcium are some of the leafy green vegetables—notably turnip tops, mustard greens, and kale. Iron
When meals are varied, you get some iron from many different foods. Liver is outstanding for iron. And one good reason for eating leafy green vegetables is their iron content. Some of the other foods that add iron are egg yolks, meat in general, peas and beans of all kinds, dried fruits, molasses, bread and other cereal foods made from the whole grain or enriched. Iodine
Along the sea coast, and in some other parts of the United States, iodine is contained in the drinking water and vegetables and fruits grown in local soil. But too little iodine in water and soil is the cause of a wide "goiter belt" across the country, particularly around the Great Lakes and in northwestern States. It is well to plan for iodine, particularly if you live inland. Eating salt-water fish or other food from the sea at least once a week will help. But the best line of defense is to use iodized table salt regularly. In this kind of table salt, the iodine lost from natural salt in refining is restored. One point of warning must be added. Using iodized salt regularly can prevent simple goiter, but it may be harmful to a goiter far-advanced. If in doubt about its use, see a competent physician. Vitamins in general
When you eat a variety of food you are pretty sure of getting a well-rounded assortment of the vitamins you need—except perhaps vitamin D. And you may also be getting other vitamins still undetected in food, but serving you just the same. Separate doses of one or more selected vitamins are best taken under doctors' orders. For research is showing more and more instances in which a vitamin or other nutrient seeks a different nutrient in a meal as a special partner to assist in its work. When a vitamin pill brings in a mass army, the right partners may not be ready to use so much specialized help. The following vitamins are of practical importance in planning family meals. Vitamin A
In one way or another, many vitamins help protect the body against infection, and vitamin A's guard duty is to help keep the skin and the linings of nose, mouth, and inner organs in good condition. If these surfaces are weakened, bacteria can invade more easily. You can get vitamin A from some animal foods. Good sources are liver, egg yolks, butter, whole milk and cream, and cheese made from whole milk or cream. Fish-liver oils which children take for vitamin D are rich in vitamin A besides. From many vegetable foods you can get carotenes, which are yellow-orange substances that the body converts into vitamin A. Green, yellow, and some red vegetables are good sources of carotene. One good reason for including a vegetable from the "leafy, green, and yellow group" every day is to keep stocked with this vitamin. Margarine, a vegetable fat, is nearly always fortified with vitamin A or carotene. Some vitamin A can be stored in the body. So it is to your advantage to eat heartily of foods that provide for it, such as the green and yellow vegetables. A savings account of vitamin A in your system may be drawn upon, if in any emergency this vitamin is wanting in the diet. The B-vitamin family
Thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin are the most generally known and best understood B's. Getting enough of these in food helps with steady nerves, normal appetite, good digestion, good morale, healthy skin. When these B's are seriously wanting in diet, malnutrition ills such as beriberi and pellagra follow. But far more common in this country are borderline cases. The chronic grouch, the lazybones, the nervous man, the housewife with vague complaints, may be showing effects of food providing too little of these important B's. Recently identified B's are folic acid and vitamin B12, both important for healthy state of the blood. Folic acid and B12 are being used medically with success in treating two hard- to-cure diseases—pernicious anemia and sprue. Few foods contain real wealth of B vitamins, but in a varied diet many foods contribute some and so build an adequate supply. One way to make sure of raising your B level is to use regularly bread and flour that have been made from whole grain or that have been enriched so as to restore important B vitamins. Getting ample milk in diet is important for B's, too, and for riboflavin in particular. B vitamins play a part in converting fuel in foods into energy. It follows that any one who eats large quantities of starches and sugars also requires more food containing B vitamins. |
Extracted from "Family Fare, Food Management and Recipes"
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