WHEN TO EAT FRUIT AND WHY
If people ate more fruit they would take less medicine and have much better health. There is an old saying that fruit is gold in the morning and lead at night. As a matter of fact, it may be gold at both times, but it should be eaten on an empty stomach, and not as a dessert, when the appetite is satisfied and the digestion is already sufficiently taxed. Fruit taken in the morning before the fast of the night has been broken is very refreshing, and it serves as a stimulus to the digestive organs. A ripe apple or an orange may be taken at this time with good effect. Fruit to be really valuable as an article of diet should be ripe, sound and in every way of good quality, and if possible it should be eaten raw. Instead of eating a plate of ham and eggs and bacon for breakfast, most people would do far better if they took some grapes, pears or apples—fresh fruit as long as it is to be had, and after that they can fall back on stewed prunes, figs, etc. If only fruit of some sort formed an important item in their breakfast women would generally feel brighter and stronger, and would have far better complexions than is the rule at present.
FOR FEVER OR SORE THROAT PATIENTS
Put some ice in a towel and crush it until it is as fine as snow and of an even fineness. Then squeeze on it the juice of an orange or lemon, and sprinkle over it a little sugar. It is a very pleasant food for persons suffering with sore throat.
WAKEFULNESS CURED BY LEMON JUICE
The wakefulness that comes from drinking too strong tea or coffee can be conquered, says a household informant, by swallowing a dash of fresh lemon juice from a quartered lemon, placed in readiness on the bedside table, and taken at the time you discover that sleep will not come.
FRUIT AS AN ANTIDOTE FOR INTEMPERANCE
A writer in a European temperance journal calls attention to the value of fruit as an antidote to the craving for liquor. He says: “In Germany, a nation greatly in advance of other countries in matters relative to hygiene, alcoholic disease has been successfully coped with by dieting and natural curative agencies. I have said that the use of fresh fruit is an antidote for drink craving, and this is true.
“The explanation is simple. Fruit may be called nature’s medicine. Every apple, every orange, every plum and every grape is a bottle of medicine. An orange is three parts water—distilled in nature’s laboratory—but this water is rich in peculiar fruit acids medicinally balanced, which are specially cooling to the thirst of the drunkard and soothing to the diseased state of his stomach. An apple or an orange, eaten when the desire for ‘a glass’ arises, would generally take it away, and every victory would make less strong each recurring temptation.
“The function of fresh fruit and succulent vegetables is not so much to provide solid nourishment as to supply the needful acids of the blood. Once get the blood pure and every time its pure nutrient stream bathes the several tissues of the body it will bring away some impurity and leave behind an atom of healthy tissue, until, in time, the drunkard shall stand up purified—in his right mind.”