The next essential in preparing food for an individual or for a family, is the combinations to be used for the best good of all with the least labor. This involves the question of age, occupation, taste, temperament, health, climate, season, habits, nationality, position in life, conditions of birth, and many other things, hence can only be treated in a general way in relation to the main purposes of food. Many kinds of food, as wheat and nuts, contain some of all the essential elements of the human body well proportioned, hence if no other product could be combined with either, life would be sustained, yet it is much better sustained with a greater variety of food. Because bread is the "staff of life" nature, as well as custom, makes it almost an essential part of every meal. Experience and judgment should decide upon the best form in which it should be used.

Variety being a part of nature's plan, as well as the great privilege of humanity, it is right to gratify the normal taste. The experience of the greatest number of people proves that unfired bread which is always ready and the light loaf of whole wheat flour, baked at a low temperature to preserve the life of the cell, are the best kinds for general use. These may be varied occasionally to please the fancy with corn meal, rye, barley, etc., also with endless combinations, as biscuits, unleavened gems, muffins, rolls, etc. It is customary to eat a larger amount of the warm bread than of cold light bread. This habit should be checked by the judgment, as part of the harm from hot bread is in the tendency to overeat, which means an overloaded stomach. Warm bread should be served at the lighter meals of the day and be supplemented with fresh fruit, the bulk of which blends with it in the stomach preventing the bread becoming massed to clog the action of the digestive organs. One or two whole wheat gems, an egg and an apple, with a glass of milk, make an ideal cooked breakfast to arouse the activity of the system for energy, as well as to furnish a small amount of tissue building nutriment, where eight or ten biscuits, with or without soft cereals, fill the stomach with a mass that is too much of the same character to be easily acted upon. Toasted light bread or unfired bread and cooked cereals make a better combination than biscuits and cereals. Corn meal makes its own bulk. It does not mass together as other kinds of warm bread are likely to do, hence is always wholesome, a reasonable amount being satisfying, although it is not so rich in proteid as is wheat. This element may be supplied by eggs, nuts, or milk, making a corn-bread meal perfect for a winter morning, as corn is more heating than wheat. The kind of bread denotes the character of every meal - the most suitable elements should be grouped around it. Raw flaked wheat in milk is delicious and when a taste for it is cultivated no cooking need be done for breakfast, if time and energy are desired for other things.

The unfired bread made by the naturalists is well proportioned to furnish good nourishment, and is of inestimable value for breakfast, lunches and quick meals. The habit of eating more cold, light bread or unfired bread, and more corn bread should be cultivated for long life, as it tends to counteract all abnormal craving caused from lack of nutrition on account of bad combinations or dead food that has always been indulged too freely.

A properly combined meal should furnish some of all the essential elements for life or growth, heat and action intelligently selected.

1. Proteid for tissue building. The word proteid is from the Greek, meaning "I hold first place".

2. Heat for warmth, and energy for labor and thought.

3. Fat for reserve force and plumpness of the body.

4. Minerals for bones, teeth, etc.

5. Water and chemical salts from juices of fruit and vegetables.

6. Bulk.

Proteid in bread must be supplemented each meal by that found in beans, peas, cereals, eggs, cheese, milk, or nuts.

Carbohydrates or starchy foods that change to sugar and are oxidized for heat and energy are found most abundantly in rice and potatoes, and in smaller proportion in beans, peas, cereals and bananas, while sugar exists in most products. Fat and fresh fruit and vegetables also abound in this element.

Fat may be supplied each meal by nuts, butter, cream, or olive oil as special articles of diet, while all kinds of food contain more or less fat globules. Too much fat should be avoided.

Enough minerals are supplied in combinations with other food.

The chemical elements in the juices of fruit, as lemons, oranges, or grapes, prepare the stomach for food - they counteract impurities of the lining membrane and prevent constipation. Each meal should begin with a piece of fruit, or a glass of fruit juice.

Plenty of water should be indulged half an hour before a meal and at intervals as desired an hour after meals. During a meal liquids should be avoided, but if used, should be at the beginning or at the close of the meal. Milk, water, or buttermilk being the least injurious.

By bulk is meant the firm, fibrous part of vegetables, fruits and grains. An entire liquid diet is only suited to infants; an entire soft, mushy diet is not desirable. The food must be carried along the digestive tract, but it must not be washed along too rapidly. A certain amount of dross and hay foods is needed to suspend the nutritive cells. This porous fibrous substance also acts like charcoal in absorbing poison, and as a brush to sweep the mucus from the lining membrane. It does not contribute much nutrition directly but aids in passing off the excretions, keeping up the action of the organs and preventing the digestive system from becoming clogged. The habit of chewing fruit or vegetables, to extract the juice, then discarding the bulk, is not a wise one, although it sometimes enables one to gratify taste to a greater extent by consuming a larger quantity of food.

All fruits and vegetables suitable to be eaten fresh, or made into salads, cold or hot, should not be softened by cooking, even though they may be cooked so carefully as to protect the cell nucleus and chem-cal elements. The outer coat of the wheat kernel does not dissolve in ordinary cooking, hence the whole wheat loaf is of greater value as food, as it has its own bulk, and chemical salts, but is only a little greater in nutriment, as the hull is passed off instead of being digested.

Each meal should have fruit or salad to serve as bulk and the absorption of poison. It is to the human system what hay or grass is to the animal; at the same time the juices have direct value as blood purifiers through chemical action. Numerous chemicals, a large amount of carbohydrates for energy, a very little proteid and many mineral salts, as well as distilled water, are also found in fruit and succulent vegetables.

Care and judgment will render each meal well balanced in the three great essential elements of foods - milk, eggs, nuts, beans, peas, or cheese, with bread for proteid - potatoes, or rice for starch or carbohydrates - butter, cream or salad oil for fat - salad and fruit for bulk serving as relish and dessert. This is about the natural order of the average dinner, hence there is no great change or sacrifice, only care and thought, in making and keeping the regular diet scientific, that life action may continue smoothly and happily.