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Meat
Dishes
RED MEAT
- We are encouraged to
eat more fruits and vegetables, but that doesn't mean we have to give
up
meat. Red meat is a concentrated source of essential nutrients like
vitamins
B-12, protein, iron and zinc and most of the lean cuts have basically
the same calories as fish.
Browse Recipes:
Meat Facts:
- Meat
in general has a more stimulating effect upon our body system and
is more strengthening than vegetable food.
- The
object in cooking meat is to kill any germs which may exist and to
soften and loosen the tissue, which renders it more easily digested and
make it more palatable.
- The
value of meat as food is due chiefly to the nitrogenous compound it
contains, the most valuable being the albuminoids.
- Albuminous¹
foods can be eaten longer alone without exciting loathing than can
fats, sugars or starches.
- Meat
is composed of muscular tissue, connective tissue or gristle, fatty
tissue, blood-vessels, nerves, bone, etc.
- The digestibility of meat is influenced by
the age of the animal killed and the feeding. Meat from old animals is
usually tough.
Veal and lamb are more tender than beef and mutton.
- The muscles that are used most are
toughest, because they are developed to a greater extent and contain
more connective tissue.
- Muscles that are constantly used contain
more extractives, hence tough cuts of meat have more flavor than tender
cuts.
- This is not always appreciated, however,
since all the flavor of tough meat is rarely extracted because it is so
hard to chew.
- Although meat contains some materials
which are better slightly cooked, tough cuts of meat contain so much
connective tissue that long cooking is necessary to make them palatable.
- Meat extracts or meat extractives are meat
bases, or rather meat which has been dissolved by water, such as soup
stock and beef tea.
- The gelatinoid of meat is easily changed
into gelatin by the action of hot water. Gelatin when combined with the
albuminoids and extractives has considerable nutritive value.
- Dry heat cooking method usually applied to
tender cuts tends to develop flavor in meat.
¹ Albuminous means food containing
albumin. Albumin is simple
water-soluble protein found in many animal tissues and liquids.
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Did
You Know?
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A
mixed diet is the only rational one for man.
Animal food
requires a considerable quantity of oxygen for its complete
combustion.
Meat is not necessary to life. Nitrogenous food we must have, but it
need not be in the form of meat. The estimate commonly given is, that
meat should occupy one-fourth and vegetable food three-fourths of a
mixed diet, but in many cases the meat eaten is much in excess of this
allowance.
There is, however, a
tendency to eat too much meat, and when its effects are not
counter balanced by enough exercise, it causes gastric distress caused
by a disorder of the liver or gall bladder and sometimes gout (a
disease hallmarked by elevated levels of uric acid in the bloodstream
that causes joint pains) and many other troubles.
The proper association of different foods always keeps healthy people
in better condition; there are times, however, when it may be necessary
to abstain from certain articles of diet.
A carbonaceous diet taxes the excretory organs less than animal food.
It may be well to bear in mind, that the protein compounds can do the
work of the carbohydrates and fats in being consumed for fuel, but the
carbohydrates and fats cannot do the work of protein in building and
repairing the tissues of the body.
An exclusively vegetable diet, low in proteins and nitrogenous
compounds, while it may maintain a condition of health for a time,
eventually results in a loss of strength and power to resist disease.
Therefore it is necessary to understand the approximate value of each
class of food in arranging the daily dietary.
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