=Apples= purify the blood, feed the brain with phosphorus, and help to eliminate urates and earthy salts from the system. As they contain a small amount of starch, and a good proportion of grape sugar combined with certain valuable acids, they constitute a most desirable and hygienic food for all seasons. They should be ripe and sweet when eaten. People who cannot digest apples in the ordinary way should scrape them, and thus eat them in _pulp_ rather than in _pieces_. =Bananas= also contain phosphorus, and are consequently suitable for mental workers. They are easily digestible, and nutritious, being almost a food in themselves. =French Plums= are judicious food for persons of nervous temperament and for those whose habits are sedentary; they prevent constipation, and are nutritious. They should be well stewed, and eaten with cream, Plasmon snow-cream, or Coconut cream (see recipe 224). =Strawberries= contain phosphorus and iron, and are therefore especially desirable for mental workers and anæmic invalids. =Tomatoes= are good for those who suffer from sluggish liver. The popular fallacy that they are liable to cause cancer, which was circulated by thoughtless persons some few years since, has been pronounced, by the highest medical authorities, to be unsupported by any evidence whatever, and to be most improbable and absurd. In the Island of Mauritius this fruit is eaten at almost every meal, and Bishop Royston stated that during his episcopate of eighteen years he only heard of one case of the disease. =Lettuce= is soothing to the system and purifying to the blood. It should be well dressed with pure olive oil and wine vinegar (2 spoonfuls of oil to 1 of vinegar, well mixed together, with a pinch of sugar). A lettuce salad eaten with bread and cheese makes a nutritious and ample meal. The thin and tender-leaved variety (grown under glass if possible) should always be chosen. =Figs= contain much fruit sugar which can be rapidly assimilated, and are very nourishing and easily digestible; when they can be obtained in their green state they are specially desirable. They may be considered one of the most valuable of all fruits, and are most helpful in many cases of sickness on account of their laxative medicinal properties. =Dates= are very similar to figs, and are both sustaining and warming; they are easily digested if the skins are thin. =Gooseberries=, =Raspberries=, =Currants= and =Grapes= are cooling and purifying food for hot weather; but, if unripe, they will often upset the liver. This type of fruit should not be eaten unless _ripe_ and _sweet_.