In this article, you will get useful, authentic nutrition information and the medicinal qualities of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and dairy products.
Fruits Nutrition Facts
Apples
purify the blood, feed the brain with phosphorus, and help to eliminate urates and earthy salts from the system. As they contain a small amount of starch, and a good proportion of grape sugar combined with certain valuable acids, they constitute a most desirable and hygienic food for all seasons. They should be ripe and sweet when eaten. People who cannot digest apples in an ordinary way should scrape them, and thus eat them in pulp rather than in pieces.
Bananas
also contain phosphorus and are consequently suitable for mental workers. They are easily digestible, and nutritious, being almost food in themselves.
French Plums
are judicious food for persons of a nervous temperament and for those whose habits are sedentary; they prevent constipation and are nutritious. They should be well stewed and eaten with cream, Plasmon snow cream, or Coconut cream.
Strawberries
Contain phosphorus and iron, and are therefore especially desirable for mental workers and anæmic invalids.
Figs
Contain much fruit sugar which can be rapidly assimilated, and is very nourishing and easily digestible; when they can be obtained in their green state they are especially desirable. They may be considered one of the most valuable of all fruits, and are most helpful in many cases of sickness on account of their laxative medicinal properties.
Dates
They are very similar to figs, and are both sustaining and warming; they are easily digested if the skins are thin.
Gooseberries, Raspberries,
Currants and Grapes are cooling and purifying food for hot weather; but, if unripe, they will often upset the liver. This type of fruit should not be eaten unless ripe and sweet.
Pineapples
They are valuable for cases of diphtheria and sore throat, as the juice makes an excellent gargle. This fruit is considered to aid digestion in certain cases.
Vegetable Nutrition Facts
Tomatoes
are good for those who suffer from a sluggish liver. The popular fallacy that they are liable to cause cancer, which was circulated by thoughtless persons some few years since, has been pronounced, by the highest medical authorities, to be unsupported by any evidence whatever, and to be most improbable and absurd. In the Island of Mauritius, this fruit is eaten at almost every meal, and Bishop Royston stated that during his episcopate of eighteen years he only heard of one case of the disease.
Lettuce
is soothing to the system and purifying to the blood. It should be well dressed with pure olive oil and wine vinegar (2 spoonfuls of oil to 1 of vinegar, well mixed together, with a pinch of sugar). A lettuce salad eaten with bread and cheese makes a nutritious and ample meal. The thin and tender-leaved variety (grown under glass if possible) should always be chosen.
Peas
are slightly less nitrogenous than lentils and haricots, but otherwise very similar; they are best when eaten in a green form, and when young and tender. When they are old the peas should always be passed through a potato masher, as the skins are very indigestible.
Spinach
contains a considerable quantity of iron in a readily assimilable form, and is, therefore, good for anæmic persons.
Onions
have a wonderfully improving effect upon the skin and complexion if eaten raw, and they act powerfully as diuretics.
Celery
is a useful blood purifier, and is valuable in all cases of rheumatism, gout, &c. Celery salt is a valuable addition to soups and savory dishes and is preferable to common salt.
Potatoes
consist principally of starch and water, with a certain amount of potash. Potatoes are an important food in so many countries that much experimenting has been done to test their nutritive value by scientific methods, and the work fully bears out practical experience in proving that they are wholesome and well digested.
With respect to the total nutritive material they supply, raw potatoes resemble fresh fruits, such as bananas and apples, with their seven or eight parts of water to one food substance, more than they do such foods as uncooked flour or rice, with their one part of water to nine of nutritive material.
The abundant mineral matter which they contain also supplies the body with important building materials and helps to regulate its processes. As is the case with most vegetables and fruits, potatoes, when they have been digested and assimilated by the body, tend to make the tissues and fluids of the body more alkaline.
Walnuts, Hazel and Brazil Nuts
They contain a considerable amount of oil and are consequently useful for warming the body and feeding and strengthening the nerves. Vegetable fat in this form is emulsified and more easily assimilated than free animal fats, as in butter, etc. Nuts are also rich in proteid matter. Where people find that they cannot masticate nuts, owing to impairment of teeth, the difficulty may be removed by passing the nuts through a ‘Dana’ nut mill. When thus flaked and spread between thin slices of bread and butter, with honey, they make delicious sandwiches for lunch. A pinch of curry powder (instead of honey) makes them taste savory.
Chestnuts
contain a larger proportion of starch but are digested without difficulty when boiled in their jackets until fairly soft. If eaten with a pinch of salt they make a nice dish.
The chestnut ranks high in nutritive value, containing eighty-nine percent. of nutrition, —fourteen and six-tenths percent. of the albuminous element, sixty-nine percent. of starch, two and four-tenths percent of fats, and three and three-tenths percent. of salts. As they contain so much starch, they are more easily digested if cooked before being eaten.
Almond
The almond ranks high in nutritive value and is highly esteemed for culinary purposes, being employed in the preparation of numerous dainty and appetizing dishes for the table. The sweet almond contains fifty-three percent. of fats, twenty-three and five-tenths percent. of albuminous elements, seven and eight-tenths percent. of starch, and three percent. of salts, making a total nutritive value of eighty-seven and three-tenths percent.
NUTS NUTRITION FACTS
Walnuts, Hazel and Brazil Nuts
They contain a considerable amount of oil and are consequently useful for warming the body and feeding and strengthening the nerves. Vegetable fat in this form is emulsified and more easily assimilated than free animal fats, as in butter, etc. Nuts are also rich in proteid matter. Where people find that they cannot masticate nuts, owing to impairment of teeth, the difficulty may be removed by passing the nuts through a ‘Dana’ nut mill. When thus flaked and spread between thin slices of bread and butter, with honey, they make delicious sandwiches for lunch. A pinch of curry powder (instead of honey) makes them taste savory.
Chestnuts
contain a larger proportion of starch but are digested without difficulty when boiled in their jackets until fairly soft. If eaten with a pinch of salt they make a nice dish.
The chestnut ranks high in nutritive value, containing eighty-nine percent. of nutrition, —fourteen and six-tenths percent. of the albuminous element, sixty-nine percent. of starch, two and four-tenths percent of fats, and three and three-tenths percent. of salts. As they contain so much starch, they are more easily digested if cooked before being eaten.
Almond
The almond ranks high in nutritive value and is highly esteemed for culinary purposes, being employed in the preparation of numerous dainty and appetizing dishes for the table. The sweet almond contains fifty-three percent. of fats, twenty-three and five-tenths percent. of albuminous elements, seven and eight-tenths percent. of starch, and three percent. of salts, making a total nutritive value of eighty-seven and three-tenths percent.
DAIRY PRODUCTS NUTRITION FACTS.
Cheese
It is very rich in protein—far more so than lean beef. If well-chosen, and new, it is a most valuable article of diet and feeds the brain, nerves, and muscles; but as it is a concentrated food it should not be taken in excessive quantity. Half a pound of cheese is almost equal to a pound of average flesh meat. The best varieties are Winslet, Gruyère (very rich in phosphorus), Port Salut, Milk, Wensleydale, Cheshire, and Cheddar.
Eggs
They are nutritive chiefly on account of the albumen which they contain in the white portion, but they are liable to cause digestive trouble, and they must not be taken too freely by those who are subject to biliousness and constipation. Such persons often find it advantageous to have them boiled quite hard.
Milk
It contains nearly all the elements necessary for repairing bodily waste. It should be scalded for half an hour in a double saucepan—to destroy tubercular and other germs. If then allowed to stand for 12 hours, clotted cream can be skimmed off (as in Devonshire) and the milk can be used the next day. It keeps much longer after being thus scalded. Dried milk is now procurable in such forms as ‘Lacvitum’ and ‘Plasmon.’
Butter
Butter is made by the churning or agitation of cream and is composed mainly of milk fats and water, together with smaller amounts of ash, salt, casein, milk sugar, and lactic acid.
Butter contains water 10.5 percent, Ash and salts 2.5 percent, Casein, and albumin
1.0, Fat 86.0.
Digestibility of Butter. — Digestion experiments show that practically all of the fat, 98 percent, is digestible and available for use by the body.
Butter is valuable only for the production of heat and energy. Alone, it is incapable of sustaining life, because it contains no proteid material.
Butter takes an important part mechanically in the digestion of food.
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