"Green vegetables" is a term used to signify plant foods eaten fresh, usually raw and generally young. Industry is now canning these extensively. Transportation is carrying them from all climates to all cities. Both these practices result in some storing of such foods. The renewal of common interest in food-production is resulting in more distributed food-growth, hence less preservation of food and a fresher food-supply. This is most desirable for all food, but especially important for foods that have as one of their functions (that is, what they do) bringing refreshment through their own freshness.

Greenness suggests the freshness of newness. Green vegetation does this for life at large. Spring renews evidences of life. Summer verdure refreshes life. New plant foods renew diet. Green vegetable foods keep a diet fresh. Though all such foods are not used uncooked, many usually are; as lettuce, celery, radishes. They are most propitiously so used. Some are served simply as relishes, but it is as salads that their use is to be developed. Italy, the land of wealth in plant production, gives salads as a form of food-preparation of fresh green plants with olive oil. This is becoming the general food practice here and elsewhere. Encourage it.

These so-called green vegetables (see pp. 6, 8) contain much water, some cellulose, a relatively large percentage of mineral matter, and usually a distinctive flavor. Their value in human nutrition is their aid to the general maintenance of body-processes. They bring freshness, salts needed, and water. Cellulose (woody fiber) that is present in them can so stimulate the alimentary tract as to enable it to free itself of waste products though were cellulose itself retained in the body in excess it would endanger intestinal fermentations that prevent proper digestion of any food and so undermine health.