Since cheese is ready to be eaten when it comes from the market, it may be more interesting for some purposes to compare its composition with that of cooked beef, freed from bone and from superfluous fat, such a piece as would be served to a person at the table. Weight for weight, cheese has appreciably more protein than such cooked beef, and 50 per cent more fat. So far as its composition is concerned, then, cheese is entitled to be considered as directly comparable with meat. The possibilities of using cheese and some other food materials in the same way as meat is discussed in some detail in an earlier publication of this department.[9] It is so used by the peasants of some parts of Europe, and was formerly so used among many other groups of people. The fact that it is not more commonly so used in this country is probably due to several causes. One cause is habit, which makes the meal seem incomplete unless it includes meat; another is the fact that since cheese has a more pronounced flavor than meat, it is not so likely to be generally acceptable as the chief food of a meal. There is always likely to be at least one member of the family who does not relish it in quantity. Another cause is the fact that it is commonly believed to be indigestible, and still another is the fact that housekeepers, through lack of experience, are much less skillful in the arrangement of bills of fare in which cheese is the central food than they are in arranging bills of fare in which meat is thus used. These last two causes will be considered in sections which follow. FOOTNOTES: [9] U. S. Dept. Agr., Yearbook 1907, p. 367. THE DIGESTIBILITY OF CHEESE. As was stated above, cheese has been thought a cause of digestive disturbances, but work recently done by the Office of Experiment Stations, in cooperation with the Bureau of Animal Industry, and briefly summed up in a recent publication tends to disprove this.[10] In the large number of experiments which were conducted, young men in good health were fed on a diet consisting of bread and fruit combined with American factory cheese which was made with different amounts of rennet and in different stages of ripening. The results showed that over 90 per cent of the nitrogenous material of the cheese was digested—that is, retained in the body—and nearly 90 per cent of the energy it supplied was available. In other words, cheese compares favorably with other foods in thoroughness of digestion—that is, in the percentage finally digested. Furthermore, it did not cause constipation or other physiological disturbances. The above statement refers to full-cream cheese. Experiments made at the same time gave practically the same values for the digestibility of skim-milk cheese, of Swiss cheese, of Roquefort and Camembert cheese, and of cottage cheese.