The salts of fruit are most desirable, being so essential in tissue building. Some of the most important of these salts are potash, lime, phosphoric acid, and iron. Deficiency of the lime salts in the bones of children produces conditions of bone softening, or rickets. This can be largely prevented by adding fruit to the diet of these afflicted children, using especially grapes, oranges, lemons, and grapefruit, which contain high percentages of lime salts.
The condition of anæmia is a lack of iron in the blood. This cannot be replaced by medicinal or metallic iron, as the body is unable to appropriate these inorganic substances; but the iron in fruit is perfectly adapted to the body needs. Plums, cherries, and especially strawberries and currants contain considerable iron, and are most helpful in the treatment of anæmic conditions.
It is perfectly apparent that fruits possess qualities and constituents that make them of the greatest value as an essential part of the daily ration to nourish and energize the body, and to promote vital activities in the maintenance of strength and healthful vigor. Fruit is also an exceedingly important and efficient factor in restoring to normal function tissues and organs that have become vitiated and are functionating abnormally.
In spite of the widespread opinion to the contrary, it can be positively asserted that fruit is of great service in the prevention as well as in the treatment of rheumatism and gout. The prejudice against the use of fruit in rheumatism originated with the idea that the acids of fruit tend to acidify the body. Quite the reverse is true. The acids of fruit, when taken into the body, are promptly converted into the alkali carbonates, thus increasing the alkalinity of the blood, tending greatly to benefit and cure the rheumatic condition, as well as to lessen the general tendency to the formation of various calculi, or stones, in the kidneys, the urinary bladder, and the gall bladder.
Fruit and Obesity
A fruit diet is of great value in obesity. An exclusive fruit diet may be taken to the greatest possible advantage by the too corpulent who wish to reduce in weight. For this purpose, fruit has the advantage of satisfying the appetite while at the same time contributing very little nutrition to the body. The free use of fruit is the method par excellence for overcoming constipation. The eating of a half dozen raw prunes before breakfast, or the taking of the juice of one or two oranges, will in the majority of cases be all that is necessary to maintain regular bowel activity.
For an overworked liver, the so-called "bilious" state, fruit is the best of all means of relief. Auto-intoxication due to an excess of poisons circulating in the blood, is treated most naturally and efficiently by a fruit diet.
The natural diuretic properties of fruit are very well known. Nearly all fruits stimulate the kidneys to greater activity, but watermelon is of particular service in this respect.