To Keep the Nation Well.  An increase in the use of vegetables and fruits is practically sure to mean an increase in health.  Many of us, especially city-dwellers, do not eat enough of them.  Many a young girl who “does not like vegetables” probably owes part of her languor to inadequate diet.  The old-fashioned “touch of scurvy” formerly noticed at the end of the winter and even now not an unknown thing, was probably due to lack of vegetables in the winter diet.  The constipation which is so disturbingly prevalent can usually be cured or prevented by eating vegetables and fruits in sufficient quantities.  One of the most serious limitations in the diet of many of the very poor is the lack of vegetables as well as milk and the unduly large proportion of meat and bread.  In a community in New York City with high mortality rate, 75 mothers whose diet was observed, ate vegetables on the average only twice a week, and fruit about the same number of times.

It is not difficult to understand why vegetables and fruits are so important.  Only a few are especially valuable as fuel or as a source of protein, but almost all are high in mineral salts and can supply the “roughage” desirable in the diet.  Some also contain the vitamines, the leafy vegetables being especially valuable because, like milk, they contain the two kinds.  The “greens,” leafy vegetables like spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and lettuce, are the ones that help most in these last ways—­“protective foods,” they have been called.  They are rich in the iron, calcium, and other minerals that some of the other foods lack.  The use of plenty of these vegetables should go far toward keeping up health.

CANNING AND DRYING VEGETABLES AND FRUITS

The value of these foods both for the nation’s health and for saving staples applies just as much in winter as in summer.  In war-time, a winter supply, either stored, dried, or canned, takes on special significance because of their substitute value if the supply of staples runs critically low.

The canning industry, because it makes vegetables obtainable at all times and places, has been of great importance in the health and development of the country.  Smith, in his “Commercial Geography,” says that “canning, more than any other invention since the introduction of steam, has made possible the building up of towns and communities beyond the bounds of varied production.”  A century or two ago, sailors after a voyage of a year or two, almost always came home with scurvy.  Recently Nansen and his men drifted in the Arctic ice for years and remained in good health, because of their supply of canned vegetables, fruits, and meats.

The Government has not been slow in appreciating the need of canned vegetables for the Army and Navy.  It has commandeered about 25 per cent of the canned beans, 12 per cent of the corn, and 18 per cent of the tomatoes of the 1917 pack.  Large amounts will be needed this year also.  Much of the 1918-19 supply for our troops in France is to be canned in France, by arrangement with the French Government, thus saving valuable shipping space.