Science the chicken is picky
She prefers to eat one grain of wheat over another.
1940, Reading time 3 minutes
Our heads are so full of distribution concerns that we must be interested in everything that concerns food supply! Even the chicken's food supply... If chickens are given a mixture of different grains, wheat, rye, barley and oats - C. Engelmann explains in the "Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Physiologie" (no. 27, part 5, 1940). ) - it appears that they have a certain preference for one of the grain types, such as wheat. Not infrequently they neglect the grains of one of the grain types, including oats. This preference has been extensively researched by Engelmann. For this purpose, heaps of a grain type were made and the piles of different grains: wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn and also peas, on a gray cardboard, always offered to the chickens next to each other for choice. The chickens always had to choose between two types. The piles of the first four grains consisted of 10-15 grains, those of peas and corn of 4-5 grains, so that apparently the different piles were almost the same size. The mutual distance between the piles was 15 cm.
At the start of the experiments, when the animals are still hungry, they start to devour both types of grain indiscriminately until a certain state of saturation has set in, after which, e.g. wheat is preferred, while the animals ignore rye. The same thing repeats itself the following days. Other chickens either initially completely consume both types of grain or take all the grains of one type, while quickly abandoning those of the other type after having eaten a few grains. A second group may eat some grains from the otherwise despised group, but takes all the grains from the favored group. The chickens appeared to have a preference series, starting with wheat, running through corn, rye, barley and oats. Now when one asks, why chickens prefer to eat one grain and prefer to eat another less or not at all, it is logical to conduct experiments to determine whether this affects taste, color, shape or other properties. of objects. Above we have seen that there may be a certain connection between the degree of saturation of the chickens and the beginning of refusing a certain food. This degree of saturation is not absolute, but relative. The most of the preferred species is recorded, and generally speaking, the more of a particular cereal species the higher it is in the ranking of preference. For example, more grams of grains are consumed from wheat than from rye or barley. The start of refusing one or another type of grain also depends on the place that type occupies in the ranking. The external characteristics of the grains play a predominant role. The situation is slightly different for peas. Some chickens like to eat peas, but they prefer some grains; other chickens prefer all grains to peas. The pea therefore does not occupy a permanent place among the chicken's favorite foods. Grain kneaded into balls of the various kinds of wheat, rye, barley, and oats were all consumed; corn and pea balls were taken less often. This shows that the shape of the food is of great importance, because the balls were almost the same size. Yet here too there appears to be a certain preference, namely in the order wheat, barley, rye, oats, peas, corn, although the differences are minor. The types of food are distinguished by color and consistency.
With artificial coloring, to make one type resemble another or to erase color differences, the ranking was not changed if the grains themselves were colored, but only if the kneaded balls of the different types of grain were colored. Except for maize, which differs greatly in consistency from the other species, any preference has now disappeared. Finally, Engelmann recreated wheat grains from rye grains and became wheat grains metamorphosed into rye grains. Here it appears that the form determines the choice, not the taste, so that in general one can say that the choice of food is determined by facial impressions and possibly also by tactile impressions, but not by taste stimuli. vitamin C combats the "X-ray hangover" The great importance that people now attach to Vitamin C for nutrition only dates from after the World War. Then the men of science became aware that a good and sufficient diet, in addition to the three major food groups — protein, fat and sugar — should also contain other nitrogenous substances. Vitamins are found in all green plantains and the husks of fresh seeds. One of the most important vitamins, which can be distinguished by the first letters of the mentioned in the alphabet is Vitamin C. It is soluble in fat, present in all green parts of the vegetable, but also in apples, pears, oranges and lemons. However, it is destroyed at a heat of 100 degrees. Fremdenblatt", it is now pointed out that German science has now managed to find a new use case. When treating the sick with X-rays, n.1. So far, shortness of breath, headache, nausea and loss of appetite have often occurred. These unpleasant side effects, which often delayed healing, had been given the collective name of "X-ray hangover". There were no effective remedies against it. This appears to be Vitamin C. Its effect appears to be based on an "Ersatzwirkung", because upon examination of the ascorbic acid level in the blood, a significant decrease in Vitamin C levels was noticeable in many patients after X-ray irradiation. About an hour after administering an additional amount of Vitamin C, the dreaded "X-ray hangover" disappeared, which could have a detrimental effect on the patient, who was already severely weakened as a result of his illness. Thus, Vitamin C can be seen as a new medicine that will be used in the future. in X-ray therapy will be applied in all countries. )
