The Whortleberry, Bilberry, Or Blueberry

The Whortleberry, Bilberry, Or Blueberry, is closely allied to the Cranberry. It grows upon very poor soil on the hills of this and many other countries, and is especially rich in iron. It is of particular value to sufferers from anaemia and nervous diseases, and is one of the simplest and most effective laxatives among fruits. As a food its value is small. The whortleberry passed through a mincing machine and mixed with soaked prepared oats, or ground nuts, and condensed milk, provides one of the best forms of porridge for breakfast and supper. I can speak with confidence on these fruits from long personal experience.

The Tomato

The Tomato, although containing over 90 per cent, of water in its raw condition, and still more when it is boiled, possesses a value of its own. Prepared as sauce it adds to the enjoyment and digestibility of the food with which it is eaten; it makes soup rich and popular; and fried, grilled, or baked, and eaten with bacon and various meats, it provides that piquant flavour which adds a relish to all. The tomato, however, is best eaten in its raw condition, and so with a pinch or two of chopped onion, some olive oil and salt, it makes the plainest of the simplest foods, such as bread-and-cheese, as enjoyable as the richest.

Dried Fruits

Raisins

This term includes Muscatels, which are dried while hanging on the vine, and Sultanas, which, like the common raisin of commerce, is dried in the sun as it lies on the ground. The raisin is a dried grape, and, unlike the fresh fruit, it is eaten with the skin, which makes it more useful both as a food and a laxative. White bread is, on this ground, improved when it is made with raisins or currants. Raisins, like dried currants, are rich foods - 10 oz. containing 7 oz. of nutriment.

When they are cheap, they provide more units of heat or energy than any other fruit or vegetable common to our markets, with the exception of the fig and the potato. At sixpence a pound they are still a cheap food, as compared with red or white meat or fish.

Figs

Figs are equally as rich as raisins and currants, but, if we except the superior brands, they are usually cheaper. The fig is not only a very rich food, containing 75 per cent. of nutrient matter, but it is a well-known laxative of a high order. One pound provides 1400 units of energy, so that two pounds a day would sustain a man who is engaged in a sedentary occupation. A pound of bread - one of the cheapest of all foods - provides approximately 1200 units of energy, so that, although it is cheaper, pound for pound, than the fig, and more suitable when both are eaten alone, it enables us to more clearly realise the economical value of the fruit. In any attempt to live upon the fig, which is the staple food of some of the Arabs, it would be necessary to add some muscle-making material. This can be found in milk; and experience has taught fig-eaters among these Eastern races to make milk a portion of their diet.

Prunes

Prunes are plums which are ripened on the trees and dried in the sun - although there are some which are cured artificially. This fruit contains 75 per cent. of food, much of which is lost in stewing unless the juice is consumed. Primes should be washed and soaked in cold water, and the liquor rejected. The fruit is a useful, and when obtainable at 4d. per lb., a most economical food, in spite of the fact that it is a stone fruit. Prunes are a well known, though very mild, laxative.

The Date

The Date, which is a fruit of a species of palm, is one of the chief articles of commerce in Arabia. One variety ripens on the trees and is ready for packing and shipping at once. Others go through a process of preparation. While, too, in one variety, each fruit is packed separately, another is packed in bulk and arrives in this country in a homogeneous mass. Dates, too, which are much superior when eaten just off the tree, are pounded by the Arabs and made into cakes which form one of the most important foods of the country in which they are grown. They provide part of the rations of horses and camels, and, owing to their highly nutritive properties, are as sustaining as almost any food that is known. In a pound of dried dates there are 11 oz. of nutritive food, of which a great portion is sugar, and the remainder nutritive gum and muscle-building protein. At 3d. per lb. - the price paid by the writer during 1915 - a penny spent in dates at this cost provides 500 units of energy. Thus this fruit is one of the cheapest of foods on the market.

Salads

Salads are eaten in three forms: (1) as a green melange of lettuce, endive, onion, watercress, radish, beetroot, tomato, cucumber, sorrel, and chicory, flavoured with chervil and dressed with olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice; (2) as vegetables, which are usually cooked and eaten separately or mixed, after dressing with olive oil, herbs, and lemon juice; these consist of potatoes, French beans, peas, beetroot, tomatoes, carrot, celery, and spinach; and (3) fruits in great variety - English fruits, fresh or bottled, being mixed at will with pineapple, prunes, and orange. These forms of salad are of great value in the maintenance of fitness, when eaten without an extravagant addition of sugar and cream. It is important to remember, in connection with these additions to the table, that the property of food does not consist solely in its nutritive value, but in its contribution to digestion and health. Vegetables and fruits, are all more or less rich in minerals, which are to a large extent lost in cooking. These properties are essential to the richness of the blood as well as to the manufacture and repair of the bones and the teeth. Anaemia is next to impossible to a person who is a consistent and liberal consumer of fruit. Another point is, that health chiefly depends, in the normal man, upon regularity. This is often prevented when he reaches middle-age if he ignores those foods which, eaten with freedom, ensure it. Fruits and green vegetables are natural specifics, maintaining a clean, healthy, digestive track, promoting normal digestion, enriching the blood, and by these means assisting to ward off those forms of disease which seldom attack a body that is thoroughly fit.

The third point to remember is that, as an addition to foods of a more substantial character, salads often provide the appetising property. Cold meat, often stale or badly cooked, is tasteless, or fails to tempt the appetite of those before whom it is placed. There is no "watering of the mouth," or, in other terms, no flow of the saliva, which is one of the important digestive juices. It contains a material known as Ptyalin, a salivary diastase, which largely assists in the conversion of the starch - winch we consume so liberally in bread and all cereals and pulse - into sugar, thus enabling it to be quickly and freely absorbed into the blood. When a handsome, tempting salad is added to the disappointing cold meat, the pleasant anticipation of eating returns, with the free flow of saliva, and then the food is eaten, enjoyed, and well digested. Thus it is that so much depends upon the cook and her method of mixing all salads, as well as upon their preparation. Some vegetable salads may be mixed with fruits, and especially with the apple chopped or grated, or with bottled plums and prunes which have been well and long soaked, not boiled, in cold water. Last of all, it may be pointed out that as a raw fruit or vegetable is much more nourishing than a cooked fruit or vegetable, owing to the loss of energy or food material in cooking, a green, or uncooked, fruit-salad is of much greater value than cooked fruits or vegetables which usually form so large a portion of our meals, and this applies much more emphatically to those that are boiled.