The adolescent period begins in the girl usually about the thirteenth year, and the boy usually about the fourteenth year. In both sexes the adolescent period is marked by great physical growth and development. In order to furnish the material for this physical growth, the diet for the adolescent should be very rich in easily digested proteins. There is no period in the whole life history of an individual when there is more urgent need of the materials which are used in building up red blood. This need is particularly urgent in the case of adolescent girls. Attention has already been called to the fact that lean meat is rich in iron; eggs are rich in iron; dark green leaves of vegetables are rich in iron. An adequate and rational menu for a fourteen-year-old girl and her sixteen-year-old brother would be somewhat as follows:

Breakfast

A cereal with cream and sugar.

Buttered toast.

Cereal coffee.

One boiled egg.

Fruit (grapes, apples, bananas, oranges, or berries).

Lunch

A puree or cream soup with crackers or croutons.

Bread and butter.

Fruit.

Rice pudding or custard.

Dinner

An ample portion of meat.

Potatoes (baked or boiled).

Side dish of vegetables.

Fruit, stewed or canned, with graham wafers.

Note regarding this dietary, that it is not only rich in proteins, but it will be adequate to nourish an adult at moderate work. As a matter of fact, the adolescent boy or girl in school, or in the office or factory, will eat quite as much as an adult, and will be far more seriously injured if he does not get all he needs than will the adult in a similar fasting. Not infrequently a lunch of some kind is called for at half past three or four o'clock in the afternoon. In the case of a girl, if she has begun to show some signs of pallor, frequently observed in high-school girls, let her prepare for herself an egg lemonade, using two egg yolks in the place of the yolk and white of one egg. Such a lunch will not interfere with her appetite for dinner, and should result in bringing back the color to her cheeks.

The general craving of adolescents for sweets is a natural one and should be satisfied. Let them make fudge and other sweets, but, as a rule, these sweets should be eaten immediately following meal-time. When so eaten they serve an important purpose in the dietary and seldom disturb the digestion. These sweets are condensed sources of energy, and the craving for them seems to be more or less instinctive. Whatever may have been the relation between the eating of sweets and tooth decay in the times of our grandfathers, the general use of the toothbrush has robbed candy of any bad reputation which it may have possessed in this direction in times past.