Kathie Powell, age 12, of Rochester, New York, for her question:

Is it true that gelatin is made from horses' hooves?

The gelatin we buy to make desserts must be pure enough to satisfy our government food inspectors. So whatever goes into it is sure to be harmless to the human body. It so happens that gelatin is not only harmless, but very beneficial. It is a body building protein for healthy people and sometimes sick people can eat gelatin when they cannot digest any other kind of food at all.

Andy is so very fond of shivery, shimmery gelatin that he eats it whenever he gets a chance. Naturally he knows that our health inspectors would not permit the sale of foods containing risky ingredients. So he goes ahead, enjoying his gelatin without caring a whoop about what is used to make it. Suppose one of the ingredients were horses' hooves. Well, hooves are no more than oversized fingernails and toe¬nails. And chances are you know quite a number of people who chew up their finger¬nails. This may annoy us, but it does not make us shudder with horror. Naturally we do not recommend fingernail chewing, but nails and hooves are made from very nutritious protein material.

Right now, you may be willing to accept the idea that horses' hooves, properly cleaned and prepared, are indeed used to make gelatin. However, as a rule there are no hooves of any sort among the ingredients. Most gelatin recipes call for skin and bones and these ingredients are taken from our highly hygienic meat and dairy animals. Some recipes process animals bones and others process the skin. In both cases, the ingredients must first be cleansed of every particle of fatty material.

Bones are soaked in a liquid bath of hydrochloric acid which dissolves away unwanted minerals. They are then rinsed and rinsed in clean water. After this, the cleaner than clean bones are put into pots of distilled water. The brew is heated and kept at a temperature of about 92 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours. Then the liquid is drained away and the bones are recooked at a higher temperature in more distilled water. At last, they are ready to break down and jellify and special ingredients are added to make perfectly sure that the gelatin is absolutely pure.

When the main gelatin ingredient is animal skin, a lime solution is used to dissolve away every trace of greasy fat. Hydrochloric acid and heating processes  are used to break down the leathery tissues. The brew is a mixture of pure water and nutritious animal protein. It is boiled and concentrated and allowed to cool into slabs of gelatin. This bouncy stuff is chopped up and dried and usually ground into small crystals. The gelatins created for desserts are mixed with sugar, juices and assorted fruity flavors. All we need now is the right amount of warm and cool water to dissolve the crystals    plus a portion of patience to wait for the delicious, nutritious gelatin to set in a shivery, shimmery shape.

It's too bad, but all of the world's gelatin is not packaged to enhance the table, please the palate and build the body. A lot of the wonderful stuff is used to make capsules for pills. Firm vitamin capsules are made from rather hard gelatin and soft capsules for cod liver oil have a trace of added glycerine. A lot of gelatin also is used to cover photographic film. And, since germs like nourishing food, lab workers use gelatin broth to feed their bacteria.