NUTS.

Nuts, one of the best articles of food known to science, the thing which helped to lift primitive man from a gibbering anthropoid to the Greek Apollo, are by many people the most misunderstood and maligned articles in all the dietetic catalogue. The nut is commonly used now, and for many decades has been used, as a confection, or to finish off the alleged good dinner; and while it was the only decent article of diet eaten during the feast, yet owing to its geographical position in the “potpourri” it was charged up with a lot of mischief for which it was in no wise responsible.

There are many intelligent people who sincerely believe the nut to be an indigestible and harmful article of food, and we quite agree with them when it is eaten about number 21 at a swell course dinner. But when given an opportunity and eaten as a decent nut should be, it is one of the most delicious, harmless, healthful and hygienic articles of food that ever graced a civilized table.

It is encouraging, however, when we know that the nut is rapidly gaining in appreciation and popularity. The great food reform movement that is now sweeping over this country and civilized Europe has caused thousands of people to abandon the use of flesh foods, and the natural substitute therefor is nuts.

The pecan nut, which has been considered in the South for many decades as a wild, prodigal growth of no great importance, is now being cultivated, harvested and husbanded as one of the most profitable, as well as one of the most important, articles of food grown in that balmy clime.

The Agricultural Department of our national government has just published a pamphlet on the subject of budding and growing the pecan. Pecan orchards are being planted in various localities in the South, and several States have adopted measures to encourage this industry. During the next few years this movement will undoubtedly receive the attention it has so long merited. It looks as though within the next few years we might see the boundless plains of Texas converted into pecan orchards instead of cattle ranches. It looks as though in the near future we might see great pecan shelling mills instead of the slaughter house. The food elements necessary to sustain life are probably better proportioned in the pecan than in any other nut known. There are over fifty varieties of this splendid nut now grown in the Southern States.

In any large market can be found from fifteen to eighteen different kinds of nuts, all of which possess very superior life-giving properties.

Nuts are especially to be recommended as an article of food, owing to the fact that they have not yet been very much contaminated by the cook stove. The lowly peanut, which has hitherto been considered worthy of no place on the American table, possesses most excellent food properties, equal to some and superior to many of the more expensive varieties.

Nuts should be thoroughly masticated. They should be reduced by the teeth to a perfect emulsion before entering the stomach, and not more than two ounces eaten at a meal. Two ounces of pure fat is enough to supply the demands of a normal body for twenty-four hours. By consulting our table on nuts, a correct idea can be gained as to the quantity of each variety that should be consumed each day. Almonds, peanuts and Brazil nuts should be blanched—that is, the inner covering should be removed before eating.

It is amazing to think of the kind of food that alleged civilized people subsist upon, when nature spreads before them its vast fields and stores of fruits and nuts that have waved to and fro in the pure air and sunshine, that have drawn their substances from old Mother Earth and filtered them through a hundred feet of pure white wood—life-giving substances that have responded to the warm embraces of summer and spring—substances that have fed the swelling bud, burst it into bloom, and filled it with fragrance and honey, sweet as Araby’s fabled rose—foods born from the fecund womb of Mother Earth, fed on the fragrance and wrapped in the many-hued swaddling clothes of odorous blossoms, and rocked by every pure and passing breeze in the life-giving cradle of summer and spring, and nursed to maturity at the breast of maternal nature and cooked by the fires of the eternal sun.