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.

I once saw a little child pick up a luscious ripe cherry in a fruit store and start to eat it. Her mother immediately said: "Don't put that in your mouth; it is not good for you. I will give you a cake when we get outside, but don't eat that."

Such lamentable ignorance! Most people deserve to lose their children. My sympathies are for the children. Any parent can have the truth about the proper care of children who will seek to acquire it. Most of them are too brain-lazy and indifferent. It is so much easier to follow traditions and customs.

If this mother desired to teach her child not to take fruit from the store, she certainly went at it the wrong way. The idea that she conveyed to the child was not that it should not take the fruit, because it should never take that which belongs to another; but that she should not eat the fruit, because it was not good for her--would make her sick.

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.

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 figs, 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, huckleberries, and all other berries are fine for children. They should always be fed raw, never cooked, and never with sugar.

Preserved Fruits are confections. Do not consume these abominations with any thought that they represent fruit.

Sugar and honey should never be eaten with fruit of any kind. Fermentation is almost sure to result.

Nuts are also very bad 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.