Not everything in the fruit and vegetable world can be considered food. The poppy plant, nightshade, tobacco and numerous other plants are poisonous. There are numerous poisonous berries and fruits.

Vegetable and fruit substances that are in common use that are best omitted from the diet are rhubarb and cranberries. These foods contain such an excess of oxalic acid that they are more or less poisonous. There are poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms. The non-poisonous are not foods as they are absolutely indigestible. They pass out in the stools exactly as they were swallowed. There is reason to believe that beets, also, are indigestible.

Vinegar, made by fermentation of fruit sugars, contains alcohol and acetic acid. The acid is more damaging to the liver than the alcohol. Vinegar also retards digestion.

Acid absorption, either an excess of wholesome organic acids, or the absorption of vinegar acid and drug acids, is gravely detrimental and is doubly so to those with impaired livers. Robust individuals may, without the slightest advantage to themselves, consume such things and eliminate them with only imperceptible losses of vitality. They should keep in mind that not even the most powerful constitutions can be abused with impunity.

This should not be interpreted to mean that acid fruits are not wholesome foods. The warning with reference to these foods is against excess.

There are many articles of food that both the well and the sick may eat without killing them instantly, but the problem of the trophologist is to discover what is best to eat--what will assure the highest degree of vigor and the longest life.

Sugar-cane was introduced into Europe by Alexander the Great. It was planted in the West Indies in the fifteenth century, Sugar has become an article of every-day use only within the past sixty or seventy years. Before this time its price was too high to be used except by the rich. In one of his annals, Sir Walter Raleigh gives the market price of sugar at that time at fifty shillings (about $12.00) a pound. White sugar is a "starvation food," like white flour and polished rice. It is lacking in salts and vitamins. Sugar is not an essential addition to the diet.

The penchant for sweetmeats which children share with monkeys and savages may best be satisfied with sweet fruits, rather than with the unwholesome concoctions of the baker's and confectioner's art.

All adulterated and denatured foods should be studiously and consistently avoided. Sugar and other products are used in equal abundance as denatured cereals. Cakes made of denatured cereals, white sugar, cold-storage eggs, pasteurized milk, coal tar dyes, synthetic flavors, poisonous baking powders, and decorated with embalmed fruit or fruit wastes are especially popular. The dietary reform needed is a radical revolution--a complete return to nature.

Refrain From Eating Left-Over Cooked Foods From The Previous Meal.

Unless chilled immediately, they undergo an insidious fermentation from one meal to the next. If chilled and then warmed over the deterioration is equally as great. Economy as well as superior nutrition dictates that meals be prepared so that little or no food is left over.

Fruits that have been cut, melons that have been opened, and salads that have been shredded also decompose quickly. Discard these.