This section is from the book "The Hygienic System: Orthotrophy", by Herbert M. Shelton. Also available from Amazon: Orthotrophy.
If three meals a day are eaten, unless two of these are fruit meals, two salads a day should be eaten. Green leaves are indispensable to the biologic diet. Fruits will not take their places. Green leaves supply complex albumens, offering all the essential constituents of human albumen.
The simple albumens of grains, tubers, roots, and fruits either do not contain them all, or contain but inadequate quantities of essential constituents such as tryptophane, lysin, etc.
It is asserted that green leaves contain sufficient quantities of complex albumens to meet human requirements. This is so only if the leaves are eaten in large quantities as they are by the cow or horse. We lack capacity for such bulk and could acquire it only by developing a large, unsightly abdomen.
Green leaves supply the tender cellulose that gives the needed bulk to food. They supply the different essential vitamins, A, B, C, etc., are abundant in alkaline salts, iron and lime in particular, in particularly assimilable form. The green coloring matter (chlorophyll) they contain is also essential to perfect nutrition.
Salads should be raw, composed of not more than four vegetables and should be eaten without salt, vinegar, oil, lemon juice or dressing and condiments of any kind.
The following vegetables are especially adapted to salad making: cabbage, lettuce, celery, cucumbers, radishes, onions, French endive, tomatoes, cress, parsley and others. Cabbage contains ten times more lime than lettuce and is easier for most people to digest. Onions should not be used often or in large quantities. The same is true of radishes and other "hot" foods.
It was not until the "Exhibition of 1851" that salad-oil was known to any save the aristocracy of England; yet, so firmly fixed has become the habit of putting oil on salads in the short time that has since elapsed, many people cannot conceive of enjoying a salad without oil. Nevertheless, the habit should be abandoned.
 
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