WHY YOU SHOULD EAT. BANANAS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11854, 4 January 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHY YOU SHOULD EAT. BANANAS.

Bananas are undoubtedly the most nutritious fruit - foods. They are excelled in actual nourishing properties by the two sweeter fruits, dates and figs, but they stand unrivalled by any fruits in digestibility. TJiis is because of their almost complete lack of fibre, and fibrous matter is what renders many otherwise splendid sorts of fruits hard to digest. The banana lias ony two parts of fibre per thousand, whereas a date has five and a-half parts per cent-., and a fig over seven parts in a hundred. It follows, therefore, that banana-pulp when eaten is entirely digested ; there is no waste at all. It is wateiy, and therefore a thirstquencher. Quite seven-tenths of it is purest water in the form the human system can absorb best, .as it is quite free from all mixtures, .though it is faintly acid with exactly half as much saline "matter that date juice has, and slightly less than onethird of the fruit-salt figs contain: Because the banana is so easily digested doctors have greatly recommended the use of this fruit for patients recovering from enteric fevqr. Dyspeptic sufferers also benefit exceedingly from its systematic use, since the enfeebled stomach-coats have no difficulty at all in assimilating the substance of the splendid natural remedy. The banana-pulp nourishes because it has nearly five parts .per hundred of a substance exact in nature with the curd of milk. Cheese would be a food looked at with horror and apprehension by a dyspeptic, yet cheese is really milk-curd solidified, and very nourishing to people with healthy powers of digestion. If the banana has so much in its pulp identical chemically with cheese it follows that it is as much a food as cheese. But banana-curd, so to call it, is in a soluble condition akin to the albumen of a fresh egg, with which, like milk-curd, it is also identical. So, in eating a banana, one obtains the benefit that would follow the swallowing of a certain amount of egg-white. Again, sugar is a very nourishing food, which {is stored up by the tissues of the body in the form of fat when more is taken than is required for purposes of energy supply. Fruit-sug*? is the very best form in which to take this valuable heat-giving food, which is a carbon ; and the , banana offers sugar to its eater in the liberal proportions of one-fifth of its full bulk. Not so much sugar by far as the '. over-sweet dried fruits, date and fig, can offer, seeing that these two are very nearly seven-tenths pure sugar; but enough to render the pulp deliciously sweet, and to redeem the luscious fruit from the charge of insipidity— for that is the charge a first taste brings from most lips. //

The following statistics, recently published in Germany concerning the relative popularity of famous operas throughout the past year, are interesting:—"Lohengrin" occupied the first place, with 294 performances; " Talinhauser," in former years second on the list, must give place; to "Fries- . chutz" with ; 278,5and; " Carmen" with 277 performances. -After " Taunhauser," with 272, came " Cavalleria," 260 ; " Trovatore," 225; " Mignon," 214 ; "Faust,'; 199 ; " Undine,", 192 ; " Meistersinger," only 171 '. ,',' Walkure," ; 131;". "Tristan and Isolde," 72. Operaottas are gradually disappearing from the German/stage, but " Fledermaus" enjoyed I 400 ' representations,.'" Geisha''• 387 i and " Mikado'.' only 93. .'..■'■