Children do not have to be forced to eat that which is wholesome and good, if they have been fed properly from the start and have not had their appetites and sense of taste spoiled by sugar, salt, pepper, spices, etc. Too many children have their appetites for plain food spoiled by the vulgar habit of seasoning their foods and cultivating in them the same perversions of the sense of taste and the same abnormal cravings that are seen in adults. Jam or jelly is put on their bread or crackers, sugar is put into their milk, sweet cookies are fed to them often, they are given candy or ice cream or little knicknacks between meals, or they are given sugar out of the sugar bowl. Mayonnaise or other such slop is smeared over their food. Their appetites become so cloyed and their sense of taste so perverted that they no longer enjoy plain food. When they grow older their perverted taste and jaded appetites and overstimulated bodies will demand tobacco, alcohol, and petting; also sex-slush in their movies and novels.

This varied or general diet idea has been and is being greatly overworked, both as regards children and adults. At no previous period in history did man have the great variety of foods he now has. But he does not need to eat every food that grows just because they are now available.

There is no indispensible food. If a child does not like spinach, and many of them do not, there are other foods just as good, or better, that he will like. I have seen a baby's nose held to force it to swallow a poisonous drug prescribed by a doctor, and I don't believe in this method of forcing a distasteful food down a child's throat any more than I believe in its use to compel the child to swallow the doctor's dope.

Never force a child to eat. If he is not hungry let him go without food. His own sense of hunger is a better guide as to when he should eat than all the science of all the ex-spurts in the world, who know all about the thing, and know it all wrong.

You supply them with plain, wholesome natural foods and no other kind and leave it to their natural instincts to teach them to eat foods that are good for them. Set them a good example--they will follow a good example as readily as they will a bad one.

I leave been asked whether or not it would be safe to turn children loose and let them eat what and when they will. just as animals do. The answer is yes, provided you supply them with natural foods, do not urge then to over eat and have not previously perverted their sense of taste and cultivated in them the stuffing habit. Don't season and sweeten their foods to stimulate a false appetite and induce them to over eat.

Children quite naturally eat monotrophic meals. They like to make a meal on one thing. Parents usually do not permit them to do this, being under the variety "spell" and being convinced that we have to have our variety all at one meal . If children were given natural foods they could safely be left to follow out their instinctive monotrophic practices. But to permit a child to make a meal on jam and bread, or on cake, or on cheese, and macaroni, would not be so good.

A few words may be said about the foods that people have unfounded fears concerning.

FRUITS are especially valuable for the mineral salts, sugar, organic acids, vitamins and distilled water which they contain.

APPLES are among the choicest of foods. They are rich in phosphoric acid and are especially valuable for nervous and rickety children. They contain much iron in its most assimilable form.

STRAWBERRIES are delicious and contain a sweet acid that makes them popular as food. They are rich in food-iron and food lime, excelling all other fruits, except the raspberry and fresh fig, in richness in iron. They are also richer in iron than most vegetables, being excelled as a source of iron only by green peas and fresh lima beans. They are also rich in vitamins.

Dewberries, blackberries, raspberries, huckelberries, and all other berries are fine for children. They should always be fed raw, never cooked, and never with sugar.

BANANAS have long been condemned by the medical profession as indigestible. This was declared false by the Hygienists who highly recommended them. "Orthodox" experimenters now declare that the banana, when fully ripe, is easily digested. But the average physician has not found this out. Bananas are very wholesome food and rank high in vitamins. They should only be eaten when thoroughly ripe, and should never be cooked.

NUTS are also very bad food and very indigestible, if we listen to the antiquated pill-peddlers and serum squirters, who claim to have been commissioned by the Almighty to look after our health. Nuts are not indigestible. They are the best of foods, and if thoroughly masticated, and not eaten at the end of a hearty meal, are easily enough digested.

RAW STARCH is not indigestible as is generally taught and believed. It is well known that cattle digest raw starch more easily and completely than cooked starch. Milo Hastings has shown the same thing to be true with man. The Department of Agriculture, in Washington, conducted experiments which revealed that raw corn, rice and other starches are digested in amounts up to eight ounces daily. Raw potatoes showed a digestibility of seventy-eight per cent.

Berg advises "from five to seven times as much vegetables, potatoes and salt-rich fruits (apples and pears are poor in this respect), as of meat, eggs or cereal products--for otherwise an adequate excess of bases cannot be guaranteed," to supply the needs of growing children. With this I concur. The pregnant and nursing mother should make up her diet in the same way, if she wishes to supply her child with adequate bases.