Cabbage, peas, lettuce, dandelion greens, beet tops, turnip tops and other
"greens" are well worth including in our bill of fare for their iron
alone. By the time children are a year old we begin to introduce special
iron-bearing foods into their diet to supplement milk. Aside from egg
yolk, we give preference for this purpose to green vegetable juice or
pulp, especially from peas and spinach or a mixture of both. The
substantial character of dry beans is too well known to require comment,
but how many realize that they are a most valuable source of iron and
other mineral salts? The fact that they are not a "complete diet" in
themselves should not disturb anyone who realizes that all diets are built
from a variety of foods. We are hardly likely to use beans to the
exclusion of everything else except in dire necessity, and then what
better could we do than use freely a food which will go so far toward
sustaining life at so small a cost?

There is a further significance for fruits and vegetables in their
contribution to the diet of the growth-promoting, health-protecting
vitamines. That the presence of fruits and vegetables in the diet is a
safeguard against scurvy is well known, though the full scientific
explanation is not yet ours. That the leaf vegetables (spinach, lettuce,
cabbage, and the like) contain both the vitamines which are essential to
growth in the young and to the maintenance of health in the adult seems
assured, and gives us further justification for emphasis on green
vegetables in the diet of little children, when properly
administered--i.e., always cooked, put through a fine sieve, and fed in
small quantities.

Aside from being valuable for regulation of the bowels, for mineral salts,
and vitamines, to say nothing of more or less fuel value, fruits and
vegetables give zest to the diet. The pleasant acidity of many fruits,