S equivalent in food value to an ox. Professor Halliburton writes:
"Instead of an ox in a tea-cup, the ox's urine in a tea-cup would be
much nearer the fact, for the meat extract consists largely of products
on the way to urea, which more nearly resemble in constitution the urine
than they do the flesh of the ox." Professor Robert Bartholow has also
stated that the chemical composition of beef-tea closely resembles
urine, and is more an excrementitious substance than a food. Those whose
business it is to make a pure meat-broth, for the purpose of preparing
therefrom a nutrient for experimenting with bacteria, cannot fail to
recognise its similarity both in odour and colour to urine. Little
consideration is needful to show the untruthfulness and the absurdity of
the statements made by manufacturers as to the food value of these
extracts. Fresh lean beef contains about 25 per cent. of solid nutriment
and 75 per cent. of water. If lean beef be desiccated, one pound will be
reduced to four ounces of perfectly dry substance; this will consist of
about 80 per cent. of proteid matter and
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