Fruit for the Table by G. C. Tenney

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 24, 1903

Fruit for the Table

By G. C. Tenney

G. C. TENNEY

With many people fruit is for use only as a titbit between regular meals. People who have grown fruits all their lives have said they never once thought of placing them upon the table. But the use of fruit or any other food between meals is an absolute injury, and should not be indulged. The use of fruit in connection with meals should be encouraged as a most salutary addition to the regular diet. It is true that most fruits contain but little solid nutriment, though people have subsisted upon them for quite a while; and in many troubles of the stomach and other digestive organs greater benefit may be derived from one, two, or three days’ exclusive fruit diet than from many visits to a doctor. The juices of fruits contain acids and other elements of great value in the assimilation of food. Fruits used with bread and grains provide every element needed for nourishment, unless there be a deficiency of fats. This latter element is supplied by the use of nuts.

In a country like ours some kinds of fruits are available the entire year. In apples, grapes, raisins, figs, and dates there is considerable of the nutritive elements; and this is especially true of bananas. In grapes, oranges, lemons, and other juicy fruits, the juices are of great medicinal value.

A false impression prevails to some extent that to the use of fruits in summer may be attributed stomach and bowel complaints. Whatever foundation such an idea has in fact is based upon the misuse rather than the right use of fruit. Unripe fruit contains starch, which, uncooked, is indigestible and deleterious. Decayed fruit is liable to contain the elements of disease, and should be rejected. Sometimes fruit is forced upon the stomach after that organ is already filled with a conglomerate stuffing of rich viands of every sort; and the trouble that follows is charged to the fruit. A man who had eaten an enormous late dinner of soup, rich pastries, wound up with a beautiful apple. He was very ill, and declared he would never eat another apple. The apple got into bad company, and received a bad name. Ripe, fresh fruits, eaten seasonably, may be taken without fear. Let us learn to appreciate the divine bounty that grants us luscious fruits, by giving them a prominent place on our tables.