Читать книгу A Handbook of Health - Woods Hutchinson - Страница 31

THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH

Tomatoes are an exceedingly valuable, though rather recent addition to our dietary. Their fresh, pungent acid is, like the fruit acids, wholesome and beneficial; and they can be preserved or canned without losing any of their flavor. They were at one time denounced as being indigestible, and even as the cause of cancer; but these charges were due to ignorance and distrust of anything new.

Lighter Vegetables, or Paper Foods. The lighter vegetables such as lettuce, celery, spinach, cucumbers, and parsley have, in a previous chapter, been classed with the paper foods. They are all agreeable additions to the diet on account of their fresh taste and pleasant flavor, though they contain little or no nutritive matter.

The Advantages of a Vegetable Garden. Notwithstanding their slight fuel value, there are few more valuable and wholesome elements in the diet than an abundant supply of fresh green vegetables. Everyone who is so situated that he can possibly arrange for it, should have a garden, if only the tiniest patch, and grow them for his own use, both on account of their greater wholesomeness and freshness when so grown, and because of the valuable exercise in the open air, and the enjoyment and interest afforded by their care.