Much has been written on the necessity of making food tasty, so as to stimulate the appetite and digestion.  It is urged that unless this is done food will not be eaten in sufficient quantity.  Innumerable receipts (some very elaborate) have been published for this purpose.  All this is supposed to increase the enjoyment of food.  The Anglo-Saxon race—­the race whose dietary is the most elaborate—­is especially subject to digestive derangements, and without good digestion and the consequent healthy appetite, no food will give full gustatory pleasure.  The most wholesome food, and that which can be eaten most frequently without weariness, is mildly flavoured and simply prepared.  Plain bread is an example; whereas sweet bread, currant bread, etc., though agreeable in small quantity, or as an occasional delicacy, soon palls on the appetite.  Rice is the poorest and mildest flavoured of the cereals, it is therefore often, perhaps generally, made more tasty by the addition of fish, curry, etc.  The bulk of the Chinese live on rice, with the exception of only 3 or 4 ounces of fish per day, and they are a fine, big and strong race.  The Japanese labourer lives on similar food.  In India rice is the food most in use, though many other cereals are eaten there.  Other races live chiefly on fruits.  It appears that the digestive organs will perform their functions perfectly with the mildest flavoured food.  There is nothing surprising in this.  The strongest, most intelligent, and largest animals are those which feed on grass, herbs and fruits.  Even the African lion is no match for the gorilla.  The lion and tiger are capable of great strength, but they cannot put it forth for long periods as can the herbivora.  Our most useful animal, the horse, can exert much more muscular energy, weight for weight, than any of the carnivora.  The cost of feeding one of the herbivora is much less than that of one of the carnivora of the same weight.  This is so whether we take the cost of purchasing the food; or the expenditure of time, labour and energy on the part of man or of natural forces in the production of the food.  Herbs, roots, corn and fruit are produced much more abundantly and freely than the corresponding quantity of sheep, deer, etc., on which the carnivora feed.

The restlessness, craving for novelty, and love of excitement, so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, and to a less extent of some other European races, has its correspondence in the food of these races.  Highly-seasoned and nitrogenous foods act as a stimulant and favour spasmodic, and for a time perhaps, great intellectual and physical exertion, with a succeeding period of exhaustion.  Simpler food favours long, sustained, uniform muscular strength, clearness of intellect, and contentment.  Let no one misunderstand us; we do not assert that all who live on simple food have either clear intellects or are contented, because there are other factors besides food, but that such