There is a prevalent idea that fish is brain food. In so far as fish is easily digested, it builds brain tissue, but no more so than beef, or any food containing a goodly proportion of protein, easily digested, absorbed, and assimilated. Lobsters are difficult of digestion and they contain little nutrition, so they are not valuable as a food. Oysters, raw, are easier to digest than when cooked. Oysters should not be eaten during the spawning season from May to September. Roasted flesh seems to be more completely digested than boiled meat, but raw meat is more easily digested than cooked. Roasted chicken and veal are tender, easily masticated, and easily and rapidly digested in the stomach. This is one reason why the white meats are considered a good diet for the sick-room, especially in the case of stomach difficulty. Fat meats remain in the stomach a much longer time than lean meats; thus, gastric digestion of pork, which is largely fat, is especially difficult. Fried pork, in which the fat is heated to a very high degree, is very difficult of digestion. (See page 197). The chief objection to pork, however, is that hogs are scavengers and live upon all sorts of refuse. Another objection is that in preparing hogs for the market, the effort of the farmer is to force the feeding and get them as fat as possible. This excess of fat may result in degeneration of the meat tissue. The latter objection does not hold, however, for hogs carefully fatted for home consumption, or for hogs which run in the forests and live upon nuts, as do the beech fed hogs of the south. The best meats are from young animals which have been kept fat and have not been subjected to any work to toughen the muscles. Preserved and canned meats should be eaten with the utmost caution, not only because of the inferior meat used in the preparation of these foods, but also from the fact that they may become putrid after being canned. The proportion of _albuminoids_, _gelatinoids_ and _extractives_ in meat vary with different meats and with different cuts of the same meat. The _albuminoids_ of meat include the meat tissue, or the muscle cells. These constitute by far the greater part of the meat. The _gelatinoids_ are the connective tissue forming the sheath of the muscle and of bundles of muscles, the skin, tendons, and the casein of bone. Gelatines are made from these and, if pure and prepared in a cleanly manner, they are wholesome. Gelatin is distinguishable in rich meat soups, which jelly upon cooling. While the gelatinoids are not muscle, they keep the muscles from being consumed when starches, sugars, and fats are lacking, and, in this sense, may be considered more in the nature of carbohydrates.