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FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 9, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 32.

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FRUITS AND VEGETABLES.

By David Paulson, M.D.

It has been found that ripe fruit digests the quickest of any food substance, and nuts next. Fruits and nuts make a very good combination, while fruits and vegetables do not. There are several reasons for this, the principle one being that vegetables are so coarse and fibrous that they require a much longer time to disintegrate and come into solution than do the fruits.
You may think of these vegetable fibers in the stomach as little bits of yarn—of course they are not so large, and yet, masticate vegetables as much as you will, some of these coarse fibers may be found remaining. Take cabbage, for example. It is about twenty-five per cent, woody fiber, so a person would have to eat about half a bushel of cabbage to get the nourishment of a reasonable meal. Now suppose one take some fruit with these coarse vegetables. It can readily be seen that particles of the fruit would be caught in these little fibers and held there until the fibers were disintegrated.
Ordinary fruits pass out of the stomach, when in a normal condition, in an hour or an hour and a half, while vegetables ordinarily do not pass out of the stomach under three and one-half to four and one-half hours. Under these circumstances, in weak digestion, the fruit soon begins to sour and ferment, until the whole mass ferments.
Many times persons who take fruits and vegetables together will have sour stomachs, when they could eat them separately with no deleterious results. A well person who has plenty of exercise may eat fruits and vegetables without injury; sufficient gastric juice will be poured out, and the acids of the fruit will keep the stomach in an aseptic condition.
The wood-chopper, for instance, does not think much about combinations. But those who have not the right start in life, who have little exercise and weak powers of digestion, must be careful about combinations, and will find it better not to eat fruits and vegetables at the same meal; if you wish to eat vegetables, eat them at one meal, and eat fruits and nuts at another.
DAVID PAULSON, M.D.
Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Mich.