ELECTICITY FOR DESSERT.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 156, 17 May 1909, Page 4

ELECTICITY FOR DESSERT.

According to an article in "The Herald of the Golden Age," a monthly journal devoted to food reform, the discovery has been made that all fruits, nuts and vegetables are, while alive, storage batteries for electricity. When they die or are killed by cooking the negative and positive systems are destroyed, and from this it is argued that they should be eaten raw. The author of the article explains that each alternate divided section of an orange is a charged cell which will cause a galvanometer of special sensitiveness to corrode a current. These cells are insulated by their skins, and collectively they constitute a battery which is insulated by the rind of the fruit. The eating of an orange is not, therefore, the simple thing it appears to be. It is the absorption of a small charge of electro-vital force. "The earth supplies negative electricity to the roots," says the author in describing an apple tree. "The degree of conductivity depends upon the amount of moisture present in the soil. The sap of the tree conveys and circulates that electricity through the system of the tree. When the leaves begin to bud they are negatively charged by the sap by means of the central vein or stalk, and the rest of the leaf is inductively positively charged by the air. When the flowers come they are charged by the air, but :<:h'-n the fruit forms a central negative smragc >•■ ;: i.-: charged through t!v. stab by tr.c -ay- conducting eurmrt from lb ■ arth. Cut open an apple, a near, >v a ouim-c-. am! the central system can be easily seen. and tb- rind, .-bin, or jacket is a nerfect insulator." The fact that the portion:- of fruit and vegetables which ordinarily rejected are either negatively charged '■>■ merely insulating matrial, it is claimed, proves that nature guides man in the selection of food •,vhbh is ''positively potential." The description has a satisfying sound.