Scientists have found out by experiments that fruits have in them all the elements that are required for man’s sustenance. The plantain, the orange, the date, the grape, the apple, the almond, the walnut, the groundnut, the cocoanut,—all these fruits contain a large percentage of nutritious [Pg 43] elements. These scientists even hold that there is no need for man to cook his food. They argue that he should be able to subsist very well on food cooked by the Sun’s warmth, even as all the lower animals are able to do; and they say that the most nutritious elements in the food are destroyed in the process of cooking, and that those things that cannot be eaten uncooked could not have been intended for our food by Nature. If this view be correct, it follows that we are at present wasting a lot of our precious time in the cooking of our food. If we could live on uncooked food alone, we should be saving so much time and energy, as well as money, all of which may be utilised for more useful purposes. Some people will doubtless say that it is idle and foolish to speculate on the possibility of men taking to uncooked food, since there is absolutely no hope of their ever doing it. But we are not considering at present what people will or will not do, but only what they ought to do. It is only when we know what the ideal kind of diet is that we shall be able more and more to approximate our actual to the ideal. When we say that a fruit-diet is the best, we do not, of course, expect all men to take to it straightway. We only mean that, if they should take to this diet, it would be the best thing for them. [Pg 44] There are many men in England who have tried a pure fruit-diet, and who have recorded the results of their experience. They were people who took to this diet, not out of religious scruples, but simply out of considerations of health. A German doctor has written a bulky volume on the subject, and established the value of a fruit-diet by many arguments and evidences. He has cured many diseases by a fruit-diet combined with open-air life. He goes so far as to say that the people of any country can find all the elements of nutrition in the fruits of their own land.