THE DIETETIC VALUE OF FRUIT 



IDA S. HARRINGTON 

 Farmers' Institute Lecturer, Albany, N. Y. 



" Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, 

 And redden in the August noon, 

 And drop, when gentle airs come by, 

 That fan the blue September sky/' 



r UK Y ANT 



A well-known teacher of dietetics has said, 

 " Nothing gives me so great a sense of 

 health and well-being as to have a supply of 

 fresh fruit within reach! 7 ' 



If more of us retained that same inborn 

 taste for simple foods and natural flavors, the 

 health of the country would be better than it 

 is today. Not that we scorn fruit wholly, 

 but, after childhood is left behind, we grow 

 to class it as an extra, a side^dish, something 

 that as one woman expressed it " is 

 nice to eat when you have had all you want of other things." 



Few housewives would consider that they had shown a proper 

 pride in their table if they set before their families as a dessert 

 merely a dish of rosy apples. Something impels us to " gild the 

 lily " and to make that dish of apples over into a pie or a Brown 

 Betty pudding before offering it as a regular course in the meal. 

 A student who had been attending a summer cooking school 

 remarked on her return, " Every student there seemed possessed 

 to learn the making of fancy desserts ; I got so that I just longed 

 for a plain dish of berries ! " Tt is human nature to think slight- 

 iuuly of overfamiliar things. Not unless we are deprived of them . 

 do we value our " plain dish of berries " as we should. 



With a growing sense of the importance of a balanced ration 

 for human beings, we shall learn that we cannot belittle the die- 

 tetic Vaiue of fruit without paying an inevitable penalty. No 

 matter if it would take seventy-five pounds of strawberries to give 



[1401] 



