The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1896-01-03
Fruit as a Food and Medicine.

parents VIII more readily spend money
on injurious or even poisonous sweets
than they will on good healthy fruit,
and fashionable society will spend dol
lars on cakes, wines and brandies,
while they spend as many pennies on
the very thing they need to keep them
healthy-frut And as for the
amount of drugs swallowed which
should be replaced in a great measure
by fruit it is beyond my powers to cal
culate Millions upon millions of dol
lars are spent annually upon mercurial
and other purgatives, most of which
would be quite unnecessary if the
people would but look upon fruit as
necessary article of diet. The fruit
grower of the future mu try to so
educate the public mind that this state
Of things will be altered The man
who makes sweets puts them up in all
sorts of tempting boxes or packages,
then he pushes the sale in various
ways Why should we not have fruit
palaces where, at reasonable prices,
people could get the choicest fruit at
any hour of the day?
Good ripe fruit contains a large
amount of sugar in very easily
digestib,e form. This sugar forms
light nourishment, which, in conjunc-
ton with bread, rice, etc, form a food
especially suitable for these warm col
onies (Australia); and when eaten
with, say, milk or milk and eggs, the
whole forms the most perfect and east
ly digestible food imaginable. For
stomachs capable Of digesting it, fruit
eaten with pastry forms a very perfect
nourishment, bat prefer my cooked
fruit covered with rice and milk or
custard. Although | look upon fruit
us an excellent food, yet | look upon
it more as a necessary adjunct than
rs a perfect food of itself.
Why for ages have people eaten APP
plesauce with their roast goose and
sucking pig? Simply because the
acids and pectones in the fruit assist
in digesting the fats so abundant in
this kind Of food For the same rea-
son at the end OF a heavy dinner we
eat our cooked fruits, and when we
want their digestive action even more
developed we take them after dinner
IN their natural, uncooked state as
dessert. In the past ages instinct has
taught men to do this; today science
tells them why they did it, and this
same science tells us that fruit should
be eaten as an aid to digestion of other
foods much more than it is now. Gull
tlvated fruits such rs apples, pears,
cherries, Strawberries, grapes, etc.,
contain on analysis very similar pro-
portions OF the same ingredients, which
are about 8 per cent Of grape sugar, 3
per cent OF pectones, l per cent malic
and other acids, and l per cent of
fieshforming albuminoids, with over
50 per cent OF water. Digestion de-
ponds upon the action Of pepsin in the
stomach upon the food, which is great
ly aided by the acids of the stomach.
Fats are digested by these acids and
the bile from the liver. Now, the acids
and pectones in fruit peculiarly assist
the acids OF the stomach. Only lately
even royalty has been taking lemon
juice in tea instead OF sugar, and lemon
juice has been prescribed largely by
physicians to help weak digestion,
simply because these acids exist very
abundantly in the lemon.
Another great action of fruit is its
shall call it-antiscorbutic action.
1t keeps the body in healthy condi-
ton. Good fruit clears the blood and
prevents this sort of thing. This
lemon-juice cure for rheumatism is
founded on scientific facts, and having
suffered myself from acute govt for
the last fifteen years, l have proved
over and over again the advantages
which are obtained from eating frp;t
Garrod, the great London authority
on govt advises his patients to take
oranges, lemons, Strawberries, grapes,
apples, pears, ETC. Tardieu, the Great
french authority, maintains that the
salts of potash found so plentifulIy in
fruits are the chief agents in purify
ing the blood from these rheumatic
and equity polsons. Perhaps in our
unnatural, civilized society, sluggish
action of the bowels and liver is re-
sponslble for more actual misery than
any other ailment. Headache. indi-
gestion, constipation, hemorrhoids.
and generally miserable condition.
are but too often the experience of the
Sufferer, and to overcome it about half
the drugs in the world are given in al:
sorts OF compounds. But bring in
your fruit and the whole scene
changes. If we so through the back
streets OF our large towns how MANY
pallld-faced, listless-loooking people