Coming now to nuts, they are, as before pointed out, the great source of proteid—outside meat and certain legumes. When thoroughly masticated, they are a wholesome and very nutritious article of diet. They are less liable to cause indigestion when they form the sole element of the meal, or when mixed only with fruit, than when eaten in combination with any other food. They contain practically the elements of a perfect food in due proportion—supplying the system with proteids, fats, carbohydrates and salts in a concentrated form, with but little waste. In addition to the nitrogenous matter which they contain, they are also a valuable, and in fact the chief, source of fats. Brazil nuts, almonds, filberts, pecans, walnuts, etc., all contain about the same proportions of carbohydrates, fats and proteids, and all contain valuable food-salts. On the whole, it may be said that they are the most valuable articles of food that we know, and when supplemented by a few fruits, form a perfect and nutritious diet. Occasionally, it may be found that nuts disagree or cause gastric disturbance. In such cases, various nut-butters may be substituted, or the nut-food omitted altogether for a few weeks, as it is more than probable, in such cases, that the system is already overstocked with nitrogenous matter. But I believe that, if properly masticated, eaten in limited quantities, and judiciously combined with a small number of other foods—especially fruits—it will be found that they do not disagree, but, on the contrary, are a sustaining and nourishing food—in fact the most sustaining and nourishing food that can be found.
Fruit juices are especially cooling and refreshing in the heat of summer. They supply organic fluids to the system, in the form of water, combined with organic salts, and this water is the purest that we know. Sour fruits of all kinds are especially valuable in cases of biliousness, inactive liver, thickening of the blood, and general clogging-up of the system. They are especially valuable in cases of disordered digestion. Fruits should not be cooked, but eaten raw, and upon an empty stomach, or combined with nuts. When combined with cooked foods, and especially with vegetables, they tend to create, as we have seen, gastric disturbances. The cooking of fruits ruins many of their most valuable properties. Ordinary sugar should never be added to fruits, since it excites fermentation; and, for cooking purposes, if fruits are cooked and it is desired to sweeten them, dates may be added for this purpose. By all means fruit should be avoided at the end of a meal consisting of a combination of foods, and particularly of cooked foods; they are sure to disagree, and the fruits will then get blamed for the whole disturbance!
Sylvester Graham, in writing of fruits as food, says:
“It should always be remembered that fruit of every description, if eaten at all, should be eaten as food, and not as mere pastime, or merely for the sake of gustatory enjoyment; and therefore it should, as a general rule, be eaten at the table, or constitute a portion of the regular meal.... All cooked food, even under the best regulations, impairs in some degree the power of the stomach to digest uncooked substances; and therefore, so long as we are accustomed to cooked food of any kind, we must be somewhat more careful in regard to the times when we eat fruit and other substances in their natural state.”
Now, if we compare the fruitarian dietary—meaning by this a diet composed of fruit and nuts, in their natural and uncooked state—with other diets, we shall ascertain the following facts:—
First, that such a diet is suited to man because of his anatomical and physiological structure. We have seen in Chapters II. and III. that, were we to judge from his anatomy and physiology, man must be classed as a frugivorous animal—with the higher apes—and that he is totally dissimilar in construction to any of the other animals.
Second. By comparing these foods with other food-stuffs, we found, in the chapter on the chemistry of foods, that all the elements essential for sustaining the physiological integrity were supplied by a judicious fruitarian diet—the proteids, carbohydrates and fats all being supplied by such foods.