74 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY- 



FOOD VALUE OF FRUITS. 



(dr. J. H, KELLOGG, BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM.) 



I am very glad, my friends, to meet you here this afternoon, and for an 

 opportunity to say a word in reference to the food value of fruit. Although 

 I did not solicit the opportunity to speak here, it certainly is a pleasure. 



I believe fruits were formerly much more appreciated as food than at the 

 present time; but they are coming into appreciation more and more. I 

 think it quite possible that the failure to make a proper use of fruit, or a 

 sufficient use of it, is largely due to an erroneous belief concerning its diges- 

 tibility. A large number of people think it is indigestible. 



There is an old adage that fruit is golden for breakfast, silver for dinner^ 

 and lead for supper; but this is an error. Fruit is golden all the time; it 

 is never lead; it is never anything else than one of the choicest of all the food 

 products which the Creator has provided for our sustenance. 



There are certain reasons, I think, why fruits have come to be considered 

 rather indigestible. One is, perhaps, they are usually taken at the close 

 of the meal, after a full meal has already been consumed; they are taken as 

 a luxury rather than as a real food. Another is, fruits are often taken 

 between meals; and perhaps, most of all, are not properly masticated in 

 eating; they are swallowed without proper chewing. As a matter of fact, 

 fruits are predigested foods. That is one of the values of fruits; they prac- 

 tically require no digestion at all. 



The green fruit contains a large amount of starch. As you know, in 

 the process of ripening this starch is converted, under the influence of sun- 

 light, into sugar and dextrine, and agreeable flavors and acids. 



In Mexico, you ask a fruit woman in the market for some fruit, and she 

 will ask you, "Do you want them hard, or do you want them cooked in the 

 sun?" And when we say Ave want the fruits cooked in the sun, she simply 

 gives us some ripe fruits — not fruits that have been baked or cooked, but 

 fruits "cooked in the sun,'' as the Mexicans say. This, really the true 

 cooking. Cooking is a process of artificial digestion by which the insoluble 

 starch is made soluble, hydrated and prepared for the action of the digestive 

 juices. This work is done in the fruit by the actinic rays of the sun, which 

 convert the starch into dextrine and prepare it for the action of the digestive 

 fluids. The action of the sun goes further than the process of cooking can 

 go : It converts the starch into sugar, which in the end result of the process 

 of digestion. In fact it goes a little further than the saliva. The saliva 

 converts the starch into malt sugar; but it is only after the saliva has con- 

 verted the sugar or starch into maltose or malt sugar and it has reached 

 the intestine, and is undergoing absorption in the intestines, that it is acted 

 upon by another ferment and is converted into dextrose. The sunlight 

 acting upon the starch in the fruit converts it not only into the soluble 

 starch and dextrine, but carries it further into the actual completely digested 

 product, dextrose and levulose substances ready to be immediately assimi- 

 lated and utilized in the body. 



Sugar, or products akin to sugar, are almost the sole substances found in 

 the great majority of fruits. Fruit is a carbohydrate food. There are three 

 different food elements; the proteids, which correspond to the white of egg 



