t of grains and vegetables. The critically careful
analyses made in recent years have shown that the proteins of nuts, at
least of a number of them, contain all the elements needed for building
up complete body proteins, in other words, nuts furnish perfect
proteins, which are not supplied so abundantly by any other vegetable
product.

This fact places the nut in an exceedingly important position as a
foodstuff. In face of vanishing meat supplies it is most comforting to
know that meats of all sorts may be safely replaced by nuts not only
without loss, but with a decided gain. Nuts have several advantages over
flesh foods which are well worth considering.

1. Nuts are free from waste products, uric acid, urea, carmine and other
tissue wastes.

2. Nuts are aseptic, free from putrefactive bacteria and do not readily
undergo decay either in the body or outside of it. Meats, on the other
hand, are practically always in an advanced stage of putrefaction, as
found in the meat markets. Ordinarily meats contain from three million
to ten times that number of bacteria per ounce, and such meats as
hamburger steak often contain more than a billion putrefactive organisms
to the ounce. Nuts are clean and sweet.

3. Nuts are free from trichinae, tapeworm and other parasites, as well
as the infections due to specific disease. Nuts are in good health when
gathered and remain so until eaten. The contrast between the delectable
product of the beautiful walnut, chestnut or pecan tree and the abattoir
recalls the story of the Tennessee school teacher who was told when she
made inquiry about a certain shoulder of pork which had been promised in
part payment of services, but had not arrived: "Dad didn't kill the
pig." "And why not," said the teacher. "Because," replied the observing
youngster, "he got well." Nearly all the cows slaughtered are
tuberculous. They are killed to be eaten because too sick to longer
serve as community wet nurses.

That nuts are competent to serve as staple foods might be inferred from
a fact to which Professor Matthews, of the New York Museum of Natural
History, calls attention to, to wit, that our remote ancestors, the
first mammals, were all nut and fruit eaters. They may have gobbled an
insect now and then, but their staple food was fruits and nuts, with
tender shoots and succulent roots, which is still true of those old
fashioned forest folks, the primates of which the orang outang, the
chimpanzee and the