62 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



vary with age, sex, occupation, and other conditions of life. Health 

 and pecuniar3- economy alike require that the diet should contain 

 nutrients proportioned to the wants of the user. 



Tlie phenomena attending the process by which a portion of food, 

 the familiar slice of bread and butter, and a bit of meat, for example, 

 is utilized in the animal economy, are varied and complex, but an 

 examination of their minutiae is not indispensable to our present dis- 

 cussion ; it will suffice to carry in mind the fact, as exemplifying the 

 use of a true food, that in the bread and butter and meat we have 

 the carbohj'drates in starch and sugar, proteins in meat, fats in 

 butter, and mineral salts. The carbohydrates are the fuel which 

 furnishes animal heat, any surplus being converted into fat. The 

 proteins repair the tissues as they are used up by the normal waste, 

 are changed into fats and carbohydrates, and any excess is con- 

 sumed for bodily heat. The mineral salts form the blood salts and 

 are also transformed into the mineral matters of bone and other 

 tissues, are stored up in the body as fat, the excess being turned in 

 as fuel. Nature is wise, and supplements the processes attendant 

 upon the use of food, by providing the animal with nerves of taste, 

 and a sense of hunger which we call appetite, and the nutrition of 

 the body is thus secured. An old writer has aptly expressed this 

 wise provision for the care of the bod}-, when he says : "In appetite 

 we have a guide in respect of the times of taking food and the 

 quantity to he taken ;" so taste is a guide in respect to the kind 

 of food. The discrimination of food with reference to the wants 

 of the system is the evident purpose of the sense of taste, and the 

 enjoyment connected with this sense was designed to afford a secu- 

 rity in addition to appetite for adequate alimentation. AVere this 

 the whole secret of the food question, there would be no difficult}' in 

 supplying the bodily needs regularly and simply ; but it becomes 

 often onh' a question of the gratification of taste, and we make the 

 mistake of confounding the perverted cravings of that special sense 

 with the food demand of the body. In this way, man}' substances 

 and articles of diet agreeable to the taste, have accorded them a 

 mistaken value as nutritives, when in fact they may consist almost 

 wholly of substances which are inert and of little value. 



Doubtless many of you have queried what all this has to do with 

 the dietetics of fruit ; a very proper question, and deserving of a 

 reasonable answer. My reply is, that having shown you what food 

 must contain to render it nutritious, I shall try to show you what 



