=42. Food and Diseases.=--If our food is dirty or is handled with dirty hands, or is put into dirty dishes, there may be disease germs in it. Our food should always be clean, and we should have our hands clean when we handle it or eat it. Storekeepers sometimes keep fruit and vegetables out of doors where street dust may blow upon it. This dust is often full of disease germs. Flies may also bring disease germs to the food. If food is kept where dust and flies can get at it, we ought not to buy it. WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED 1. Food is a mixture of water, albumin, fat, starch or sugar, and minerals. 2. Animal foods, like milk, eggs, and meat, have albumin and fat in the best form. 3. Plant food has albumin and fat, but it has very much starch or sugar. So, taken together with animal food, it makes a complete food. 4. Lime, iron, soda, and salt are found in all foods, but we must add a little more salt to food. 5. Water is found in all food, but we must drink some besides. 6. Dirty water, or water with a taste or smell, is not fit for use. 7. Taste tells us what kind of food to use. 8. Hunger, or the appetite, tells us how much food to use. 9. There can be a false hunger for sweet things. This may lead us to eat too much. 10. Eating too much of sweet things is one form of intemperance. CHAPTER VI TOBACCO =43. Harmful eating.=--Men often eat for the fun of eating, and sometimes they eat harmful things. They chew tobacco and drink strong drinks, because they like their taste, just as a child eats candy. =44. Tobacco.=--Men have always drunk strong drink. Within the last four hundred years, men have learned another way to please a wrong taste. When Columbus discovered America, the Indians were using tobacco. They taught the Spaniards how to smoke it, and since then almost the whole world has used it. Tobacco is the leaf of a tall plant. It needs a better soil than any other crop. It takes the richness from the ground, and spoils it for other crops. =45. Nicotine.=--About 1/30 of each tobacco leaf is a strong poison. This poison is called _nicotine_. A drop or two of it, or as much of it as is in a strong cigar, will kill a man. It gives the tobacco its smell and taste. Men use tobacco for the sake of a poison. =46. Why men use tobacco.=--Men give queer reasons for using tobacco. One smokes for its company, another because he is with company. One smokes to make his brain think better, and another to keep himself from thinking. Some use tobacco to help digest their food, and others use it to keep themselves from eating so much. Boys smoke to make themselves look like men. The real reason for using tobacco is that men learn to like its taste, and do not care if it harms them.