Graham bread 1 pound Potatoes 2 pounds Vegetable fat 1/2 pound Apples 1-1/2 pounds Milk 1 pint This bread-potato-fruit diet gives a very excellent basis of wholesome nutrition. The potatoes yield an alkaline ash which has a highly solvent power over uric acid, and, therefore, a good supply of these valuable tubers is needed by the nation. To most Americans the dietary factors here described will appear to be merely attenuated hypotheses, fit only for philosophic contemplation. For, in real life, it is the roast beef of Old England, or some other famed equivalent, that makes its appeal. Far be it from me to disparage the feast following a hunt of the wild boar or other feasts famed in song and story, but that is not the question. The question is, is meat necessary? The description of the Italian dietary answers this in the negative. But is meat desirable? The Italian experimenters believed that the addition of four or eight ounces of meat to the dietaries of some of their subjects increased their physical and also their mental powers. The increase in mental power due to change in diet has always seemed to me to be a figment of the imagination and not susceptible of demonstration. Thomas lived for twenty-four days on a diet of starch and cream, during four days of which time the very small quantity of three ounces of meat was taken daily, and he found his mental and muscular power unchanged. A remarkable experiment on the effect of a potato diet has been reported by Hindhede. An individual partook of a diet of between four and one-half and nine pounds of potatoes daily, with some vegetable margarine, during a period of nearly three hundred days. The rule was to eat only when hungry and then the potatoes could be taken at the rate of an ounce a minute. During the last three months (ninety-five days) of the experiment severe mechanical work was performed and the total food intake for the latter period amounted to 770 pounds of potatoes and 48 pounds of margarine. What could be more simple than stocking the cellar with coal, potatoes, and a tub of margarine! Who then would worry about the complexities of modern life?