DIET OF TRAINERS.—The following are a few of the restrictions and rules laid down by experienced trainers:—
Little salt. No course vegetables. No pork or veal. Two meals a day; breakfast at eight and dinner at two. No fat meat is allowed, no butter or cheese, pies or pastry.
VEGETABLES
egetables used for culinary purposes comprise roots and tubers, as potatoes, turnips, etc.; shoots and stems, as asparagus and sea-kale; leaves and inflorescence, as spinach and cabbage; immature seeds, grains, and seed receptacles, as green peas, corn, and string-beans; and a few of the fruity products, as the tomato and the squash. Of these the tubers rank the highest in nutritive value.
Vegetables are by no means the most nutritious diet, as water enters largely into their composition; but food to supply perfectly the needs of the vital economy, must contain water and indigestible as well as nutritive elements. Thus they are dietetically of great value, since they furnish a large quantity of organic fluids. Vegetables are rich in mineral elements, and are also of service in giving bulk to food. An exclusive diet of vegetables, however, would give too great bulk, and at the same time fail to supply the proper amount of food elements. To furnish the requisite amount of nitrogenous material for one day, if potatoes alone were depended upon as food, a person would need to consume about nine pounds; of turnips, sixteen pounds; of parsnips, eighteen pounds; of cabbage, twenty-two pounds. Hence it is wise to use them in combination with other articles of diet—grains, whole-wheat bread, etc.—that supplement the qualities lacking in the vegetables.