e contrary, good well-baked white bread is neither
indigestible nor constipating. It is indeed the staff of life. Two
large slices should form the background of every meal, unless there is
an extraordinary amount of other starchy food or unless the person is
too fat. Milk-fat (from whole milk, cream, and butter) is by far the
best fat for children. Besides fat, it furnishes a certain
growth-principle necessary for development. As the dairyman cannot
raise good calves on skimmed milk, so we cannot raise robust children
without plenty of butter and milk. The pity of it is that poor people
are forced to try! Milk is also the best protein for children, whose
kidneys may be overstrained by trying to care for the waste matter
from an excessive quantity of eggs and meat. Bread and butter, milk,
fruit, vegetables, and sugar in ample quantities and meat and eggs in
moderate quantities are pretty sure to make the kind of children we
want. Above all things, let us train them not to be afraid of normal
amounts of any regular food or of any combination of foods.

=The Fear of Mixtures.= There are many people who can without
flinching face almost any single food, but who quail before mixtures.
Perhaps there is no notion which is more firmly entrenched in the
popular mind than this fear of certain food-combinations, acquired
largely from the advertisements of certain so-called "food
specialists."

The most persistent idea is the fear of acid and milk. It is
interesting to watch the new people when they first come to my table.
Confronted with grape-fruit and cream at the same meal, or oranges and
milk, or cucumbers and milk, they eat under protest, in consternation
over the disastrous results that are sure to follow. Out of all these
scores of people, many of whom are supposed to have weak stomachs, I
have never had one case of indigestion from such a combination. When a
person knows that the stomach juices themselves include hydrochloric
acid which is far more acid than any orange or grapefruit, that the
milk curdles as soon as it reaches the stomach, and that it must
curdle if it is to be digested, he has to be very "set" indeed if he
is to cling to any remnant of fear.

Of course to say that the stomach is well prepared chemically,
muscularly, and by its nerve supply to handle any combination of
ordinary food in ordinary amounts is not the same thing as saying that
we may devour with impunity any amount of anything. It is a good