Fruits are rich in alkaline minerals and in those qualities or characteristics which are called vitamins and complettins and also in organic acids. Sweet fruits are especially valuable for their delightful sugars, so easily digested (sometimes almost pre-digested), which sustain the body with so little energy expenditure in digestion.

Fruit sugars are better than starch. Even bananas, commonly condemned as indigestible, are a superior food and easily digested if fully ripened. Fruit sugars require very little work in digestion and consume far less energy than starch. "The ordinary dried figs of commerce," says Dr. Densmore, "are said to contain about 68 per cent of glucose, which when eaten, is in the identical condition that the starch of cereal food is converted into after a protracted and nerve-forcing-wasting digestion." The same is true of grapes, dates, raisins, bananas, etc.

Starch is an almost insoluble carbohydrate and is converted into sugar in the process of digestion in rendering it soluble. The following brief description by Milo Hastings, of the storing of starch by plants and its later conversion into sugar is both interesting and instructive: "Many plants store future food material in this form of starch and later, when nature requires this material in soluble form so it can move and flow through the cells, the starch is changed into sugar.

"This is the change that occurs in the sprouting or malting of all grains, and malt syrup is sugar made in this fashion from the starch of the barley grain. Even the starch of the potato turns to sugar when the potato is planted, and sometimes after long storage we get a little of this sugary taste in our potatoes and wonder what is the matter with them.

"When we get starch in any form it is changed into sugar before absorption from our digestive organs and yet after absorption some of this sugar is changed back into gycogen or 'animal starch,' which is stored in the liver, or to a lesser extent in the muscles, until it is needed as fuel for our muscles. Then before it is actually oxidized or burned in the muscles this product must again be changed back to sugar."

Fruits are rich in levulose (fruit sugar), which is the choicest of all sugars. It represents starch in a state of complete digestion and is ready tor instant absorption and assimilation. It is the ready absorption of this sugar that renders fruit juices so refreshing to the fatigued person.

The best source of sugar for the body is sweet fruits--grapes, dates, bananas, figs, raisins, etc. These sugars come to us almost pre-digested and well-balanced with minerals and vitamins. These fruits are wholesome, natural, delicious and are full of life-sustaining qualities. No cook, confectioner or manufacturer can even remotely imitate these delicious products of nature's solar-vital laboratory.

Sweet fruits are superior to starches as a source of carbohydrates. Man is a sub-tropical animal and his craving for sweets is, undoubtedly, a survival of his habit of subsisting largely on the sweet fruits which grow so abundantly in the sub-tropics and tropics. Sweet fruits serve the same heat and energy purposes that starch does and need almost no digestion. The digestion of starch foods consumes much more energy than does the digestion of sweet fruits. Dr. Densmore, indeed, strenuously advocated a non-starch dietary and insisted upon the substitution of sweet fruits for starch foods. For he claimed, and rightly, that sweet fruits give the greatest amount of nourishment for the least amount of digestive strain.

Herbert Spencer, who stigmatized bread and milk and butter, as insipid, and who praised fruits because they were savoury and wholesome, declared that "the more the labor of digestion is economized, the more energy is left for the purposes of growth and action." He perceived, also, that considerable energy is consumed in converting starch into sugar, in making it available for use in the body.

Starch digestion takes place largely in the duodenum. Indeed, combined, as it usually is, with proteins and acids, starch is almost wholly digested in the duodenum, and has usually undergone considerable fermentation before it reaches there.

Starch must first be converted into sugar before the body can use it--fruit sugars have been converted from starch to sugar while ripening under the influence of the sun. The sun and the life force of tree having done this part of the work, man may save his energy by eating the fruit instead of cereals or potatoes, which certainly do not form any part of man's natural diet.

Fruits produce more food per acre than any other food, except pecans. Humboldt calculated that the ground required to produce thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes, will produce four thousand pounds of bananas--a delightful fruit that is more valuable than both of these foods. Grapes and other fruits will all produce comparatively large yields.

A grapevine planted in 1775, at San Gabriel, Calif., now has a base eight feet and nine inches in circumference; its branches spread over an area of twelve thousand square feet--a space the size of a city lot 100 ft. by 120 ft. It produces a ton of grapes a year. No tilled crop can equal fruits and nuts in the amount yielded. Fruit culture will simplify agriculture and lessen the farmer's burdens.

Fruits are commonly divided into three classes according to the amount of sugar and fruit acid they contain, viz., acid fruits, sub-acid fruits and sweet fruits. The most common fruit acids are malic, tartaric, citric and oxalic. These occur usually in acid salts of potassium, sodium or calcium.

Malic acid is found chiefly in apples, pears, currants, berries, pineapples, grapes and cherries. Tartaric acid is found in grapes. Citric acid is found in oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, tangeloes, tomatoes, gooseberries and currants. Oxalic acid is found in small amounts in raspberries, tomatoes, grapes and currants, with but a trace of it found in apples, plums, oranges and lemons. Cranberries are rich in it. During the ripening process, fruit acids are slowly transformed into sugar. As the orange, for example, ripens, its acid content decreases and its sugar content rises.

The principal sweet fruits are dates, figs, sweet grapes, raisins, bananas, prunes and the pawpaw.

The chief subacid fruits are apples, pears, apricots, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, grapes, peaches, persimmons, plums and practically all deciduous fruits.

The acid fruits are oranges, lemons, limes, pineapples, grapefruit, tangerines, tangeloes, strawberries, loganberries, cranberries, loquats and tamerinds.