FRUIT IN SUMMER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3822, 16 October 1883, Page 4

FRUIT IN SUMMER.

Lightness is the first essential alike in the food and drink taken in yvarm weather. There is then less yvork to bo done, less waste of tissue, less need of tho preeminently muscle-forming and heat-pro-ducing substances meat and bread; and fruit, as being both palatable and easily obtainable, is much iv use. Its advantages aro that it provides a seasonable change of diet, light aud wholesome if yvell chosen, and a poyyerful tonic and stimulant of digestion with aperient properties. There are few yvho cannot enjoy it in one form or another. For diabetics, only the least desirable kinds, as certain nut and almonds aro available, all others, as containing sugar being forbidden. Sufferers from acid dyspepsia must select carefully and limit their consumption to the least irritating--a feyv strayvberries or a fc-yv grapes. Diarrhoea and dysentery preclude tho use of all fruit. On the other bund for constipated persons it is sometimes tho only reliable remedy yvhich they can use continuously yvith comfort; it is also of benefit in renal diseases, by its action on the bowels. Atonic persons generally take it yvell, and feel the better for its digestive property. Those iv normal hoaltirmay eat almost any ripe fruit. The bland varieties are the most yvholosome and nutritious —• strayvberries apples, pears, grapes, and gooseberries. The last named, hoyvever, yvith currants and raspberries, are less yvholcsomo than the others. Stone fruits are apt to disagree yvith the stomach ; but the more watery, as peaches and large plums arc better than the smaller and drier, as apricots and damsons. 'J.he pulp of orange renders them heavy. Among other foreign fruits, bananas are yvhoicsomo. Dried fruits, and the skin of fruits in general, aro indigestible. Nuts the edible part of yvhich is really tho seed, contain much albumen and some fat in a condensed form, and are particularly difficult of digestion. Fruit may bo taken yvith a meal or on au empty stomach. In the former case, it promotes digestion by its gently irritating effect on tho mucous membrane of the stomach and intestine. If an aperient effect bo desired, it had better be taken in the morning before breakfast or betyveen meals. A succulent and pleasantly acid variety is best for both of these purposes, while it is also a food. The quantity of fruit yvhich should bo taken depends on the kind. If it belong to the bland nutritious class, a healthy person may noyv and then partake of it as freely as of any other yvholcsomo food ; but ho yvill gain most benefit if ho take only a little and take it regularly. Tho same may bo said of the invalid yvith whom fruit agrees. Cooking removes much of the acidity from crude fruit, and renders it lighter as well as more palatable. So treated, it is productive of good and no harm ; but it is a fundamental principle that yvhatevor fruit is eaten uncooked must be fully ripe and not over-ripe. The many sound trite, and indeed the principle is commonly admitted ; but not it yvould seem, by all, for yve still find people and not a feyv, yvho will themselves deliberately take and worse, will giveto their children, green gooseberries, grcou apples kc, tho very hardness of yvhich, apart from their acid puugency, suggests their unfitness for digestion. Such people

use as food an acid irritant poison, whoso necessary action is to cause excessive intestinal secretion with more or less inflammation. Hence arises diarrhoea. On the other hand, fruit yvhich is over-ripe, iv yvhich fermentation has begun, is a frequent cause of this disorder, and equally to be avoided, and perhaps also more dificult to avoid because the insidious beginning to decay is not easily recognised. It should never be forgotten by any yvho inline to follow the season in their feeding, that the want of such precautions as the above may produce that dysenteric form of diarrhoea ''British cholera," yvhich is occasionally as rapidly fatal as tho more dreaded Asiatic typo of that disease. — British Medical Journal.