We shall attempt to give no 101 recipes, but to draw a few general inferences from our discussion. In planning our diet we ought, wherever possible, plan it around milk as the nucleus. Milk, as we have seen, contains the three classes of foodstuffs, the mineral salts, proteins rich in the necessary amino-acids and all three vitamines. To be sure, it is somewhat deficient in the antiscorbutic vitamine, which is the reason why physicians supplement the baby's milk diet with orange juice. But all in all., it is nature's food par excellence. Professor McCollum rightly considers milk as a "protective" food, in the sense that any deficiencies in the various foods eaten are well counterbalanced by a milk diet.

With this in mind, liberal quantities of milk or its equivalent (in the shape of cocoa or coffee) should form part of the daily diet. Realizing how sensitive to changes of temperature the vitamines are - and in this respect it should also be kept in mind that the milk proteins themselves undergo changes on heating which are still little understood - the milk, whenever possible, should be taken in a fresh, unheated condition. Neither pasteurized, nor condensed, nor powdered milk is fully the equivalent of the fresh milk.

With milk as the nucleus of the diet, we can now fill in the outer portions of the cell. A certain amount of vegetables and fruits should always be included - the particular kind depending upon the season.

Do not misunderstand any suggestion about freshness. I do not mean to imply that cooked or canned fruit and vegetables, or dried milk, is not valuable, or that they should be discarded. On the contrary, modern civilization could hardly exist without them. But if you do use the canned, etc., foods, remember that these cannot contain as much vitamines as the fresh varieties; so be sure to take a little "something fresh" every day.

Aside from their vitamine content - thereby supplementing the supply in milk - fruits and vegetables contain appreciable quantities of mineral matter, and are helpful as laxatives; and vegetables also contain carbohydrates.

With milk as the nucleus of the diet, and moderate quantities of fruit and vegetables added to the milk, we may still be somewhat deficient in protein requirements. These may be obtained from any one of the cereals, such as wheat, rye, barley, etc. The cereals are also rich in carbohydrate, though poor in fat.

Milk, cereal, fruit and vegetables can constitute a complete diet, provided, of course,,we take enough to assure all calorific requirements. The milk and cereal supply the protein, and however deficient in certain essential amino-acids" the cereal proteins may be such deficiencies are more than counterbalanced by the milk proteins. The milk, cereal and vegetables supply the carbohydrates; so does fruit, but to a less degree; and the milk supplies the fat. The amount of fat included in such a diet may not be very much, but it is still a question whether fat is really an essential constituent, provided always that the individual consumes enough carbohydrate. In any case the amount we usually consume is far more than we need. In America and England, particularly, where we cannot be tempted to eat bread without butter, the fat consumption is abnormally high.

All four food products, milk, cereal, fruit and vegetables, contain mineral salts, and they all contain one or more of the three vitamines so far identified.

But you will say that this diet of mine does not include the most prized of foods, meat. We, and particularly we Americans, eat meat altogether beyond all requirements. With the diet just outlined we could live quite happily without ever tasting any meat. But I recognize that while hunger may be a purely physiological manifestation, appetite is more complex; and our highly-civilized man needs tempting dishes to make him enjoy his food. Perhaps the most tempting of all dishes is meat in one of its several forms. The roast chicken, the porterhouse steak, the lamb chops, etc., "make the mouth water"; and "making the mouth water" causes an abundant flow of digestive juices; and these digestive juices are necessary to prepare the food for assimilation.

So eat meat. Your meat will give you a food rich in protein and will stimulate your appetite. But with appreciable quantities of milk and cereal, fruit and vegetables, hardly more than two ounces, and certainly never more than a quarter of a pound of meat per day should be consumed.*

Fish plays much the part that meat does; both are valuable sources of protein, and, to some extent, fat; and whenever the milk and cereal consumed are not sufficient to supply protein needs - which will happen whenever such supplies are scarce, or perhaps too costly, or when one or both of them are disliked - meat and fish are invaluable substitutes.

* Meat supplements the ordinary cereals and leguminous proteins to make the mixture better. Meat extract is one of the most potent gastric succagogues." (Professor Mendel.)

Better even than meat and fish as an additional source of protein are eggs; for these are also rich in fats and particularly the fat-like substances, the lipoids, the importance of which to the body is only now beginning to be appreciated. For the growing child, for the nursing mother, for the convalescent, few foods are as nutritious, weight for weight, as are eggs.