FRUIT AS FOOD 
days, and the daily food consisted of dif- 
ferent combinations of fruits and nuts, 
of which the following day’s ration may 
serve as a sample: 475 grams apples, 110 
grams bananas, 850 grams oranges, 5 
grams dates, 2 grams honey, 10 grams 
olive oil, 55 grams almonds, 70 grams 
pine nuts, and 50 grams walnuts. 
The later studies were made with one 
of the women and two of the children 
included in the first group, and in addi- 
tion with two elderly men who had been 
vegetarians for years and had limited 
their diet almost exclusively to fruits and 
nuts, and with two young men, university 
students, who were accustomed to the or- 
dinary diet, though one of them had ex- 
perimented with a vegetarian and fruitar- 
ian diet for some time. The students and 
one of the elderly men ate three meals 
a day at the usual hours. The others ate 
but twice, the first meal being taken 
between 10 and 11 o’clock in the morn- 
ing and the second between 5 and 6 o’clock 
in the afternoon. As before, the diet in- 
cluded a large assortment of fresh fruits, 
with considerable quantities of dried 
fruits and nuts, and some honey and olive 
oil. In a few cases small quantities of 
other foods were also eaten. 
Considering these studies as a whole, 
the diet of the women and children fur- 
nished from 32 to 43 grams of protein and 
1,190 to 1,480 calories of energy per day, 
the cost ranging from 15.7 to 275 cents. 
It is the usual custom to discuss dietary 
studies on the basis of the amounts eat- 
en per man per day, and the results ob- 
tained with these women and children, 
when recalculated to this basis, showed 
a range of 47 to 80 grams of protein and 
1,850 to 2,805 calories of energy, the cost 
of the daily food ranging from 21 to 55 
cents per man per day. In the studies 
with the young and the old men the pro- 
tein supplied by the daily diet ranged 
from 40 to 85 grams and the energy from 
1,712 to 3,305 calories, the average being 
62 grams protein and 2,493 calories, the 
cost ranging from 18.1 to 47 cents per per- 
son per day. These amounts are consid- 
erably smaller than have been found on 
an average with families living in many 
different regions of the United States and 
1045 
under a variety of conditions, as is shown 
by the fact that with 52 families in com- 
fortable circumstances the average pro- 
tein in the daily diet was 103 grams and 
the average energy 3,500 calories. On 
the other hand, in many of the dietary 
studies made under the auspices of the 
Office of Experiment Stations it has been 
found that persons living on a mixed diet 
have obtained amounts directly compar- 
able with those supplied by the fruitarian 
diet. Thus, at the North Dakota Agricul- 
tural College several years ago a diet- 
ary study showed that the food consumed 
per man per day by a group of students 
furnished 64 grams protein and 2,579 
calories and at Lake Hie College 68 
grams protein and 2,610 calories, calculat- 
ed on a uniform basis per man per day. 
In a recent investigation carried on at 
Harvard it was found that the diet of 
nine students who lived at the college 
commons and, from necessity or choice, 
endeavored to live cheaply supplied, on an 
average, 89 grams protein and 3,068 
calories. In this case the average cost 
was 39.9 cents per day and at the North 
Dakota and the Lake Erie colleges 13 and 
18 cents, respectively. It will thus be 
seen that in the California investigations 
the fruit and nut diet supplied the sub- 
jects with amounts of protein and energy 
which are directly comparable with those 
obtained by many other persons from a 
mixed diet, though in general the quanti- 
ties were smaller than are supplied by 
the diet of the average family. It should 
be said that the persons living on a fruit 
and nut diet apparently maintained their 
normal health and strength. 
It seems fair to say that at the present 
time the consensus of opinion of well-in- 
formed physiologists is that the ordinary 
mixed diet is most convenient and satis- 
factory for the average individual. It is 
equally clear from the investigations re- 
ported that fruits and nuts should not be 
looked upon simply as food accessories, 
but should be considered a fairly econom- 
ical source of nutritive material. It must 
be remembered, too, that the use of fruits, 
fresh and preserved, often makes palat- 
able an otherwise rather tasteless meal. 
Jam with our bread is a reasonable com- 
