Fruit as an Article of Daily Diet.

Manawatu Herald, 23 April 1892, Page 3

Fruit as an Article of Daily Diet.

One of the most salutary tendencies of domestic management in our day is that which aims • at assigning to trait a favoured place in our ordinary diet. The nutrient value of such food, in virtue of its component starchy and saccahrine material, is general admitted ; and while these substances, cannot be said to equal in accumulated force the most solid ingredients of meat and animal fat. they are similarly useful in their own degree, and have, moreover, the advantage of greater digestibility. Their conversion within the tissues is also attended with less friction and pressure on the constiuictive machinery. Almost all persons in fairly normal health may partake of sound and ripe fruit in greater or less amount. Except in certain cases, indeed, there is practically no exact limit to its consumption under these circumstances. Among such exceptions may be noted the gouty and rheumatic habit of body. A tendency to diarrhoea or a dysenteric history obviously forbids the free or frequent use of fruit. Dyspeptic stomachs, on the other hand, are usually benefited by a moderate allowance of this light and stimulating fare. It must be remembered, moreover, that every fruit is not equally wholesome, let the digestion be as powerful as it may. Nuts, for example, consisting as they do, for the most paH, of condensed albuminoid and fatty matters, cannot compare in acceptance, either by the palate or the stomach, with other more succulent kinds, even though they contain in the same bulk a far greater amount of nutriment. A little of each fruit is enough for digestion, and that little is best cooked. Nevertheless, if we take fruit as a whole, ripe and sound, of course, and consider its variety, its lightness, and nourishing properties, whether eaten alone or with other food, and its cheap abundance, we cannot hesitate to add our voice in support of its just claims on public attention. — Lancet.