ize
of small seeds wholly escaped digestion.

Having been for more than fifty years actively interested in promoting
the use of nuts as a staple food, I have given considerable thought and
study to their dietetic value and have made many experiments. About
twenty-five years ago it occurred to me that one of the above objections
to the extensive dietetic use of nuts might be overcome by mechanical
preparation of the nut before serving so as to reduce it to a smooth
paste and thus insure the preparation for digestion which the average
eater is prone to neglect. My first experiments were with the peanut.
The result was a product which I called peanut butter. I was much
surprised at the readiness with which the product sprang into public
favor. Several years ago I was informed by a wholesale grocer of Chicago
that the firm's sales of peanut butter amounted on an average to a
carload a week. I think it is safe to estimate that not less than one
thousand carloads of this product are annually consumed in this country.
The increased demand for peanuts for making peanut butter led to the
development of "corners" in the peanut market, and more than doubled the
price of the shelled nuts and to a marked degree influenced the annual
production. The nut butter idea also caught on in England.

I am citing my experience with the peanut not for the purpose of
recommending this product, for I am obliged to confess that I was soon
compelled to abandon the use of peanut butter prepared from roasted nuts
for the reason that the process of roasting renders the nut indigestible
to such a degree that it was not adapted to the use of invalids. I only
mention the circumstance as an illustration of the readiness with which
the public accepts a new dietetic idea when it happens to strike the
popular fancy.

Ways may be found to render the use of nuts practical by adapting them
to our culinary and dietetic customs and to overcome the popular
objections to their use by a widespread and efficient campaign of
education. Other nuts, when crushed, made most delicious "butters," as
easily digestible as cream, since they did not require roasting. I later
found ways for preparing the peanut without roasting.

The fats of nuts, their chief food principle, are the most digestible of
all forms of fat. Having a low melting point they are far more
digestible than most animal fats. Hippocrates noted that the stearin of
eels was difficult of digestion. The in