VEGETABLES.

The word “vegetable,” in its broadest sense, is used to describe everything of an herbaceous character,—everything in plant life, not merely food products.

When we consider only that portion which is used to support animal life, its meaning becomes much narrowed. When we consider that portion used as food by man, it is more narrowed still. But when we come to consider that which is or can be used in an uncooked state, it becomes more limited still.

Some very high authorities claim that vegetables are wholly unnecessary in the sustenance of the human body, but experience has led us to the conclusion that those containing much chlorophyl, such as lettuce, cabbage, celery, spinach, parsley, onions, watercress, dandelion, etc., are very necessary and valuable articles of food, and many vegetables that can be taken in an uncooked form are found to be very rich in the organic salts so essential to the maintenance of health.

In the selection of foods, one of the safest rules to be governed by is that all articles that can be used in their natural condition, as they are handed to us by Mother Nature, if they do not offend the sense of taste and smell, are good food, and, on the contrary, all articles that have to be ground, mixed, fixed, cooked, greased, mushed and mussed up, are not only unnecessary, but are not good foods.

Aside from the fact that the adoption of uncooked foods will produce the highest form of physical, mental and moral health, its next most important office is to do away with the enormous labor and complications in the preparation of foods.