estible to such a degree that it was not adapted to the use of
invalids, but simply as an illustration of the readiness with which the
public accepts a new dietetic idea when it happens to strike the popular
fancy. Ways must be found to render the use of nuts practical by
adapting them to our culinary and dietetic customs and to overcome the
popular objections to their use by a widespread and efficient campaign
of education.

Attention has already been called to the superior nutritive value of the
nut. It has other excellencies well worthy of consideration; for
example, the protein of nuts is of the very choicest character. Recent
investigations by Rubner, Osborne, Mendel, and others have shown that
every plant produces its own special varieties of proteins. There is
indeed a wide difference even between the proteins of various cereals
and the proteins of many vegetables differ so widely in character from
those of the human body that it is doubtful whether to any extent they
can be utilized for human nutrition. Fortunately the potato is in this
regard an exception and furnishes a very excellent type of protein. This
objection does not apply to nuts. The proteins of nuts are in fact so
very closely allied to those of the animal body that food chemists of a
generation ago referred to the protein of nuts as vegetable casein
because of its exceedingly close resemblance to the protein of milk.

The fats of nuts, their leading food principle, are the most digestible
of all forms of fat. Having a high melting point, they are far more
digestible than animal fats of any sort. The indigestibility of beef and
mutton fat has long been recognized. The fat of nuts much more closely
resembles human fat than do fats of the sort mentioned. The importance
of this will be appreciated when attention is called to the fact that
fats entering the body do not undergo the transformation changes which
take place in other foodstuffs; for example, protein in the process of
digestion is broken into its ultimate molecular units. Starch is
transformed into sugar, which serves as fuel to the body, but fats are
so slightly modified in the process of digestion and absorption that
after reaching the blood and the tissues they are reconstructed into the
original form in which they are eaten; that is, beef fat is deposited in
the tissues as beef fat without undergoing any chemical change whatever;
mutton fat is deposited as mutton fat; lard as pig fat, etc