SCIENCE SITTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1921, Page 46

SCIENCE SITTINGS

(By “Volt.”)

Nuts as Food.

Most people eat nuts as an addition to a meal rather' than as part of it. We are occasionally adjured to live wholly on nuts and other uncooked food, after the manner of our arboreal ancestors, but few of us have taken this advice seriously. Nuts, however, are real foods and deserve a place in the diet, not as a sort of frill superadded to it. They are indigestible as often eaten, but apparently not because the stomach can not deal with their substance. Finely chewed, or made into flour or pastes, they cause no trouble. An editorial writer in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago), reporting the results of experimental work at Yale University, asserts that not only is nut protein • of superior quality, but that nuts contain elements valuable to animal growth. They are also the only vegetable product that is as efficient as animal food for the elaboration of human milk. We read in the medical journal named above:

"The food chemist has long given to the various nuts a prominent place among concentrated foods. From his analytic standpoint they may even surpass such recognizedly valuable foods as meats, eggs, and cereals in their concentration of nutrients. Although nuts and products made from them have been used by man the world over as adjuvants to his usual diet, they have only lately obtained a larger recognition. The failure to eat nuts more extensively is doubtless due in part to their reputation for indigestibility and to the discomfort. that may occur after eating them at the close of a heavy meal. • "Scientific studies have not justified the reputation for the indigestibility of nuts. Experiments conducted by Cajori at Yale - emphasized anew that nuts are valuable foods. If nuts are eaten properly and used in the diet as eggs, meat, and other foods rich in protein are eaten, they behave quite as well in the body as do the ordinary staple articles of food. Particularly when nuts are finely chewed or are consumed in the finely divided form of nut pastes or nut ' butters,' there can be no complaint about the proper utilization of the product. "But the nuts have something more than mere digestibility to recommend them. Their protein is, in general, of a superior quality. The production of good growth is a test for biologic ' completeness ' of a protein. In experiments just conducted at Yale University, Cajori has secured very satisfactory growth over long periods in animals on diets in which the almond, English walnut, filbert, and pine nut, respectively, furnished the essential source of protein in the ration. From a study of the relations of diet to milk production in women, Hoobler pointed out, n&t long ago, that as a rule animal proteins are more efficient than vegetable proteins for the elaboration of human milk. However, nut proteins were an exception to this generalisation in that diets containing almonds, English walnuts, pecans, and pe/aiiut-butter as a source of protein proved to be as suitable for milk production as diets that furnished protein from animal sources. The latest information as to the nutritive

virtues of commonly used nuts can only be welcomed, particularly by those who, like diabetics, rely on these food products, most of which are poor in digestible carbohydrates r but rich in proteins and fats, to enlarge the variety of a limited regimen."