sive use of various nuts
as confections. That nuts do not hold a more prominent place in the
national bill of fare as food staples is due chiefly to two causes;
first, the popular idea that nuts are highly indigestible, and second,
the limited supply.

The notion that nuts are difficult of digestion has really no foundation
in fact. The idea is probably the natural outgrowth of the custom of
eating nuts at the close of a meal when an abundance, more likely a
super-abundance, of highly nutritious foods has already been eaten and
the equally injurious custom of eating nuts between meals.

Neglect of thorough mastication must also be mentioned as a common cause
of indigestion following the use of nuts. Nuts are generally eaten dry
and have a firm hard flesh which requires thorough use of the organs of
mastication to prepare them for the action of the several digestive
juices. It has been experimentally shown that nuts are not well digested
unless reduced to a smooth paste in the mouth. Particles of nuts the
size of small seeds may escape digestion. Nut paste or "butter" is
easily digestible.

Delicious nut butters may be prepared from true nuts such as the almond,
filbert and pine-nut, by blanching and crushing, without roasting.
Peanuts require steam roasting. Over-roasting renders the nut difficult
of digestion.

More than 50,000 tons of nut butters are produced in England every year.
Peanut oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil are the principal raw
materials used. 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, and other tissue
wastes which abound in meats.

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 as found in the markets, are practically always in an advanced
stage of putrefaction. Ordinary fresh, dried or salted 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 sterile.

3. Nuts are free from trichinae, tapeworm, and other parasites, as well
as other infections due to specific organisms. Nuts are in