Part 2

“=The fat of nuts exists in a finely divided state, and in chewing of nuts a fine emulsion is produced so that nuts enter the stomach in a form best adapted for prompt digestion=,” says Dr. Kellogg.

Pecans Furnish The Balanced Ration

“_The pecan is a nut of immense economic value._ The pecan furnishes practically a balanced ration. It is a highly concentrated and highly nutritious food. _Compared with round steak, it contains one-twelfth as much water, two-thirds as much protein, from four to six times as much fat and has between three and four times as great fuel value._

_Pecans contain most of the elements essential to the building of the frame and body tissues._ The food value of pecans is rapidly becoming generally recognized, and it will not be long before the pecan will be extensively used not only as a substitute for certain classes of food, such as meats, but also a substitute for food of all classes.”—U. S. Congressional Record, Jan. 12, 1917.

Nuts—A Staple, Necessary Food

[Sidenote: Long valued for diabetics—a good food for all]

“There are abundant indications,” says the Journal of the American Medical Association for September 21, 1918, “that nuts, which have long found a valued place in the dietary of the diabetic without detriment to his health, will grow in popularity as foods for the well.”

[Sidenote: “Not luxuries—but among the most nutritive of foods”]

“The exigencies of war time have emphasized anew those properties of nuts as foods which remove them from the category of luxuries and place them on the list of substantial components of the day’s ration,” it adds in its editorial comments on the experiments of Professor Cajori, of Yale University. “It should be remembered,” it states, “that bulk for bulk they (nuts) belong among the most nutritive foods ordinarily available.”

Opposing the prejudice that nuts are difficult of digestion, it adds, “=Cajori’s studies lead him to the conclusion that if nuts are eaten properly and used in the diet as are eggs, meats and other foods rich in protein, they have a physiological value on a par with that of staple articles=.” Only in the case of the chestnut—because of its large starch content—was cooking desirable.

Commenting upon this article, Good Health Magazine for January, 1918, says: “=For nearly half a century we have advocated the use of nuts as a staple element of the dietary of man=.”

As Good Health points out, these conclusions of Professor Cajori are in harmony with the suggestions of the United States Food Administration that nuts “should be counted as part of the necessary food and not eaten as an extra.” “We are led to believe,” adds Good Health, “that the occasional indigestion following injudicious eating of cheese and nuts is probably often due to forgetting that they are very substantial foods, and eating them at the end of an already substantial meal.”

[Sidenote: Ideal food for nursing mothers]

The experiments of Dr. Hoobler, of Detroit, Michigan, in the Woman’s Hospital and Infant’s Home, showed that for nursing mothers a diet consisting largely, 50%, of nuts, was far superior to any other dietary, and in every particular giving nearly 15% greater flow of milk, with 30% greater food value, and that the mothers took the diet readily and enjoyed it. (Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 12, 1917.)

Nuts Versus Beefsteak

[Sidenote: Animal flesh supplies too much protein for bodily needs]

“Beefsteak has become a fetish with many people; but the experiments of Chittenden and others have demonstrated that the amount of protein needed by the body daily is so small that it is scarcely possible to arrange a bill of fare to include flesh foods _without making the protein intake excessive_. This is because the ordinary foodstuffs other than meat contain a sufficient amount of protein to meet the needs of the body. Nuts present their protein in combination with so large a proportion of easily digestible fat that there is comparatively little danger of getting an excess,” states Dr. Kellogg.

“_In face of vanishing supply of animal flesh it is most comforting to know that meats of all sorts may be safely replaced by nuts not only without loss, but with a decided gain_,” he adds.

Among the other advantages of nuts and animal flesh which Dr. Kellogg cites are the freedom from waste products such as uric acid, urea, carmine, etc., which cause so many human ills.

Nuts are clean, sweet and aseptic, free from putrefactive bacteria; while ordinary flesh foods contain three to thirty million putrefactive bacteria per ounce.

[Sidenote: Nuts—clean, sweet and pure—do not deteriorate like animal flesh]

Nuts are free from trichinæ, tape worm and parasites, and from the possibility of carrying specific disease which is always present with animal flesh. “=Nuts=,” says Dr. Kellogg, “=are in good health when gathered and remain so till eaten=.”

Nuts—The Safer Source of Protein

[Sidenote: Why add to your load the burden of the tired steer?]

“Beefsteak has a certain food value,” says Good Health for January, 1919, “though far less than is generally attributed to it, =but in addition it embodies toxic elements, waste products from the animal’s body, contained in the venous blood, always poisonous, which gives the beefsteak its red color=.”

“These elements are muscle poisons and brain poisons. They cause fatigue in the animal from which they are derived and in the man who eats them.”

“An experiment by the late Victor Horsley, a London surgeon, proved that in concentrated form these poisons completely paralyze the brain cells.”

[Sidenote: “Do we need meat?” asks Alfred W. McCann, famous food authority]

“=Do we need meat?=” asks Alfred W. McCann, noted food authority, in Physical Culture. He answers his own question by pointing to conclusive proof of Anthony Bassler and others, that the human system cannot utilize over two ounces of protein a day. Yet four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, pork or lamb chops, etc., contain all the protein the system can utilize, while cereals, milk, eggs, nuts, etc., add to the quantity. He proves by the figures of former Secretary Houston, of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and of Dr. Clyde L. King, University of Pennsylvania, that Americans consume 80 grams of protein daily, compared to 44 grams for France before the war; 14 grams for Japan; 26 for Russia; 27 for Austria. He indicts Americans as “Kidneycides,” overtaxing the kidneys by this excess protein diet, and bringing on constipation, biliousness, headache, catarrh, rheumatism, etc. He emphasizes the disadvantages of animal flesh as a source of protein, shows how vegetable sources of protein are purer and safer.

[Sidenote: “No” answers the world’s most authoritative food body]

The Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, the most authoritative food body ever gathered, “=voted that meat was not a physiological necessity=.” Dr. Graham Lusk, one of the American Commissioners to that body, suggests cutting the American meat ration in half. That this is readily possible is shown by the November, 1919, Monthly Crop Report of the United States Department of Agriculture. Page 116 gives the annual average meat consumption in the United States as 179.9 pounds per capita—while best authorities agree with the statement of Alfred W. McCann that 91 pounds would be more than ample. Dr. Lusk comments on the fact that in England “The reduction of meat in the dietary produced no unfavorable results.”

Grow Pecans—The Ideal “Fat” Food

Dr. Kellogg in an address at Biloxi, October, 1917, said that the officials of the United States Department of Agriculture foresaw this condition and the increasing prices for animal flesh over twenty years ago. Since then the increase of our human population and the decrease of our animal population has so greatly exceeded their estimated figures that the question, “=Is meat imperative to complete nutrition?=” has become an imminent one.

Animal flesh supplies protein and fat. We have shown on page 10 how nuts supply the necessary fat and protein. Dr. Kellogg emphasizes the fact that nuts supply proteins of such a character that they render complete the proteins of cereals and vegetable foods.

“=This discovery is one of the highest importance since it opens a door of escape for the race from the threatened extinction by starvation at some future period, perhaps not so very remote=,” adds Dr. Kellogg.

[Sidenote: Nine-tenths of our corn fed to animals]

“From an economic standpoint,” he adds, “the rearing of animals for food is a monstrous extravagance. According to Professor Henry, Dean of the Agricultural Department of the University of Wisconsin, and author of an authoritative work on foods and feeding, one hundred pounds of food fed to a steer produces less than three pounds of food in the form of flesh. In other words, we must feed the steer thirty-three pounds of corn in order to get back one pound of food in the form of steak. Such an extravagant waste can be tolerated only so long as it is possible to produce a large excess of foodstuffs. It is stated, as a matter of fact, that at the present time scarcely more than ten per cent. of the corn raised in the United States is directly consumed by human beings. A large part of it is wasted in feeding to animals. This economic loss has been long known to practical men, but it has been regarded as unavoidable since meat has been supposed to be absolutely essential as an article of food.”

“Think of it,” comments Good Health, for June, 1918, “100 pounds of perfectly good corn, in exchange for three pounds of beef, _and the pound of beef when obtained is worth less as a food than a pound of the original corn_. Ninety-seven pounds wasted just to satisfy a cultivated appetite, _or appetite based on ignorance_.”

“In view of these facts,” stated Dr. Kellogg, “it is most interesting to know that =in nuts, the most neglected of all well known food products, we find the assurance of an ample and complete food supply for all future time, even though necessity should compel the total abandonment of all our present forms of animal industry=.”

[Sidenote: Seven or eight million acres of nut trees would supply all needed fats]

“The planting of seven or eight million acres of nut trees might supply the whole country with an abundance of fat, so that it would no longer be necessary to waste corn in feeding to pigs to obtain an inferior quality of fat,” says Good Health.

Twenty Times As Much Food Per Acre

[Sidenote: 3,000,000 calories per acre from nuts; only 150,000 from beef]

Consider what it would mean if America could take its many million acres of pasturage and get from each twenty times the food value! Of course, no thinking man would claim that every acre of pasturage is available for nut raising; but where the change can be made, that gain is possible.

As Dr. Kellogg points out, it takes two acres two years to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds; an average of 150 pounds per year per acre. The same acre planted to walnut trees would, he states, produce 100 pounds per tree per year for the first twenty years; which means 4,000 pounds of nuts from an acre of 40 trees. The food value of the 150 pounds of steer cannot exceed 150,000 calories or food units; while the nut meat from the same acre equals 3,000,000 calories in food value. As Dr. Kellogg concludes, “_Twenty times as much food from the nut trees as from the fattened steer, and food of the same general character, but of superior quality_.”

As Dr. Kellogg previously pointed out: “=A pound of pecans is worth more in nutritive value than two pounds of pork chops, three pounds of salmon, two and a half pounds of turkey or five pounds of veal=.”

While the price of nuts is by some considered high, Dr. Kellogg directs attention to the fact that “=even at present prices the choicest varieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equivalent food values are compared=.”

[Sidenote: Nuts as a Substitute for milk and eggs]

Experiments by Dr. Hoobler, Detroit, and at Battle Creek Sanitarium, prove that nuts “=Possess such superior qualities as supplementary or accessory food that they are able to replace not only meats, but even eggs and milk=.”

Nut Meat The Real Meat

[Sidenote: Nuts imported 1917, nearly ten times as great as in 1900]

It must be remembered that the period in which the use of nut meat grew over fifteen times as quickly as the population increased was before the war conditions made every man consider food values more carefully. Right up till 1914, the year in which the war in Europe started, there was a steady increase each year in the production of nuts and the importation of nuts, yet prices kept soaring on all the better varieties because the greatly increasing supply failed to keep pace with the increase in demand.

Though the importation of nuts in 1910 had been valued at over thirteen million dollars, and this was nearly four times as great as in 1900—it kept increasing until in 1917 it amounted to nearly thirty-three million dollars. The importation of nuts in 1917 was nearly ten times as great as imports for 1900, yet these imports and the increasing American production failed to meet the demand.

[Sidenote: Pecan nut meat a year-round necessity]

These figures from U. S. Government reports show that any one who assumes that nuts are a holiday luxury is entirely wrong. That the public wants nut meat the year round, that the only drawback to a still greater increase in consumption is the shortage of the supply of fine nuts is proved by United States Department of Agriculture figures.

When J. C. Cooper wrote in a leading agricultural weekly:

“The demand for walnuts is growing much faster than the supply. We do not produce in America more than twenty per cent. of what we consume, and it will take fifty to a hundred years, with all the encouragement of the nut experts, to raise enough walnuts to supply the home demand.”

he stated a condition which applies with manifold greater force to the consumption of pecan nuts.

It is true that the California production of Walnuts doubled during ten years, while the importation trebled—yet in spite of this five-fold production English Walnuts constantly increased in price. Since then the price of walnuts has increased steadily every year, despite increase of supply until in November, 1918, the price per pound was 80% higher than at the same time in 1914, according to the Monthly Crop Report for December, 1918. Yet the 1918 crop was nearly twice as large as in 1914, according to Statistician H. E. Pastor, well known as an authority on western crops.

The price of pecans increased 50% on the commonest sorts between 1900 and 1910; and from the December, 1918, Monthly Crop Report we see that the 1918 price per pound on all pecans was over 38% higher than for 1917; Georgia, which has the largest percentage of paper shell pecans, showing the highest price per pound.

The Finer The Nut—The Greater The Demand

[Sidenote: Increased demand is for finer nuts]

It is true that in Walnuts a condition has come about as in other nuts—that the increasing demand is for the finer, higher priced grades. What are the points of superiority that have led to this great increase in public demand? Why are old established black walnut trees less valuable as profit producers than English Walnut trees only a quarter as old and producing only a fraction of the quantity of nuts?

=First=—Thinness of shell and ability to get out the kernels whole.

=Second=—Superior flavor and food value.

=Third=—Attractiveness in appearance of the nut and of the nut meat when removed.

=Fourth=—Ease of keeping nuts for longer periods and using them readily.

[Sidenote: Paper Shell Pecans meet every demand]

Now compare the fine Paper Shell Pecan with the English Walnut on every one of these four points of public demand.

It is contained in a shell so thin that it is easily broken in the hands without the use of nut crackers. The partitions between the kernels average as thin as in the English Walnut, and the average person will, in less time, remove more whole kernels of the Paper Shell Pecan than of any other nut.

As to flavor and food value let such experts as Luther Burbank answer. (See Foreword, page 4.) Remember that his answer is certainly unbiased, for he is a patriotic native of California where America’s largest crop of walnuts is produced—and that State produces no quantity of Paper Shell Pecans.

As to attractiveness in appearance, of both the nut and the nut meat, you and your friends are the best judges. People who know both nuts have already handed in their verdict favorable to the paper shell pecan. In addition, the pecan has been endowed by nature with a shell which is air-tight—and therefore keeps many times as long without losing its fine flavor or becoming dry and tough.

“The Most Prized of All Nuts For Domestic Uses”

In Bulletin No. 30, of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., we read regarding Pecans: “In the course of time, however, as they are more widely grown, they will become the most prized of all nuts for domestic use, and it is probable that when the supply is large they will be preferred abroad to the best Persian nuts.”

The Pecan—The Year-round Nut

[Sidenote: Can be raised at best in a forty-mile radius]

=The pecan is the one nut suitable for eating the year round. And the present tendency is toward the year-round use of nuts.=

Another reason why the finer pecans are surer to maintain their high prices than any other nuts is found in the fact that Walnuts of the finest grades are being raised in quantities in California, Oregon, Washington and other States, and in England, France, Italy and South American countries—while the territory in which the Paper Shell Pecan attains its highest state of perfection is confined to a 40–mile radius in southwestern Georgia, embracing those portions of Calhoun, Dougherty, Lee and Mitchell counties, which are nearest Albany.

Is it any wonder that the former State Entomologist of Georgia, Mr. E. Lee Worsham, whose name is virtually always included as one of “the three big men in his line of endeavor,” wrote: “=In my opinion the pecan growers of South Georgia have the finest horticultural proposition in the United States=.”

“Among the Highest Priced Horticultural Products of America”

“Pecans of the second class bring $12,500 a carload. As a result of the superior merit of this class of pecans and the limited extent to which they are grown, they are now netting the growers in certain districts a value per volume of product ranking them among the highest priced horticultural products grown on a large scale in this country. Carloads weighing 36,000 pounds each were recently (Oct. 1916) shipped from the Albany district of southwest Georgia to Chicago brokers at 35c. a pound or $12,500 a car. These prices were for pecans of the second class, the firsts bringing still higher prices.” United States Congressional Record, Vol. 54, No. 22.

“What is The Paper Shell Pecan?”

Mention Pecan to any one who has tasted the improved paper shell variety and they will assume that you are talking of Paper Shell Pecans. For the person who cracks and eats paper shell pecans feels it almost a sacrilege to call the common wild pecan a =pecan=.

Yet there are thousands of Americans who have never tasted paper shell pecans, and who think of pecans only as wild pecans, grown largely in Texas.

Pecans are divided in three general but radically different classes, as the description and cuts below indicate.

[Sidenote: Wild Pecan—a staple food among Indians]

=The ordinary wild pecan= is native to America. The earliest French explorers found that one of the staple foods of the Indians was this palatable nut which grew in the forests of the south, and in that portion of Mexico adjoining the Gulf States. Pecan trees in Texas and Louisiana have been found which were over five hundred to seven hundred years old—which were still yielding large crops of nuts.

Like the oak, no one ever knew a Pecan tree to die of old age.

There are in the Southern States wild pecan trees of which the records go back to the first civilization on this continent.

The pecan tree is so symmetrical and beautiful that it is called “The Queen Shade Tree of Many a Southern Home.” Its fruitage is so prolific that it is said to be “one of the most astonishing food engines in all nature, yielding literally barrels of nuts.”

“Your Pecan Is Superior To Our Walnut,” Says Burbank

In the American Nut Journal, May, 1915, we read: “LUTHER BURBANK is credited with the following statement regarding the pecan tree: ‘If I were young again I would go South and devote my life to propagating new species of the pecan. Walnut culture is the leading horticultural product in California, makes more money for us and makes it easier than anything else, and your pecan is superior to our walnut. _The longevity of the pecan orchard and its immense earning power make it one of the most profitable and permanent of agricultural investments._’”

The Hardiest of All Nut Trees

[Sidenote: Pecan trees fear no drought]

The reason for this long life is that the pecan is the hardiest of all nut trees—free from all ordinary tree pests and diseases because it is of the hickory group, and the longest lived member of that group. The lack of surface moisture—the great enemy of most trees—is not a disadvantage to the pecan, for it has a remarkably long tap root which goes down so deeply into the ground that it draws moisture from the sub-soil. Since the blooming period is late in Spring, the buds are not injured by frost.

The wild pecan has been a popular nut, rivaling, because of its superior flavor, such other nuts as the walnut, chestnut, shellbark, hickory-nut, etc. This popularity was secured despite its many drawbacks—for the shell of the wild pecan is hard and the partition walls between the kernels thick and bitter. There was too little meat and too much difficulty getting it—but the experts saw in the great demand for pecans, despite these disadvantages, =the promise of rich reward for improving the pecan=.

[Sidenote: Seedling superior to wild grown Pecan]