Several varieties of nuts are used for the making of nut butter, and this food is a very excellent substitute for meat.
Certainly nuts have material advantage over a good many foods. They keep indefinitely. They never putrefy. They are not infested with harmful bacteria. You can never get tape-worm or any other parasitic trouble, which occasionally follows the eating of infected food.
I am glad there are societies organized to propagate the nut. A prominent concern of New York City is very active in promulgating the value of the nut, and is encouraging the planting of nut trees.
Somebody has estimated that there are three million miles of country roads, and that if nut trees were planted alongside these roads there would be enough protein food for the entire population.
Nuts are rich in protein, lime, iron and vitamins.
Many dishes may be made from the nut which have the appearance and flavoring of meat, without the objectionable effects of flesh diet.
Last year we imported twenty-five million pounds of almonds, forty million pounds of Brazil nuts, eighteen million pounds of filberts, and forty-four million pounds of walnuts,—about twenty million dollars worth of these nuts were brought into the country.
This shows that there is some appreciation certainly of an article of food which deserves to be even more commonly used than it is at present.
HARDINESS IN NUT TREES
By C. A. Reed, U. S. Department of Agriculture