Locke: Fruit

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 20 Fruit. Fruit makes one of the most difficult chapters in the government of health, especially that of children. Our first parents ventured paradise for it; and 'tis no wonder our children cannot stand the temptation, though it cost them their health. The regulation of this cannot come under any one general rule; for I am by no means of their mind, who would keep children almost wholly from fruit, as a thing totally unwholesome for them: by which strict way they make them but the more ravenous after it, and to eat good or bad, ripe or unripe, all that they can get, whenever they come at it. Melons, peaches, most sorts of plumbs, and all sorts of grapes in England, I think children should be wholly kept from, as having a very tempting taste, in a very unwholesome juice: so that if it were possible, they should never to much as see them, or know there were any such things. But strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, or currants, when thorough ripe, I think may be pretty safely allowed them, and that with a very liberal hand, if they be eaten with these cautions: 1. Not after meals, as we usually do, when the stomach is already full of other food: but I think they should be eaten rather before or between meals, and children should have them for their breakfast. 2. Bread eaten with them. 3. Perfectly ripe. If they are thus eaten, I imagine them rather conducing, than hurtful to our health.

Summer-fruits being suited to the hot season of the year they come in, refresh our stomachs, languishing and fainting under it; and therefore I should not be altogether to strict in this point, as some are to their children, who being kept so very short, instead of a moderate quantity of well chosen fruit, which being allowed them would content them, whenever they can get loose, or bribe a servant to supply them, satisfy their longing with any they can get, and eat to a surfeit.

Apples and pears too, which are thorough ripe, and have been gathered some time, I think may be safely eaten at any time, and in pretty large quantities; especially apples, which never did any body hurt, that I have heard, after October.

Fruits also, dried without sugar, I think very wholesome. But sweet-meats of all kinds are to be avoided; which, whether they do more harm to the maker or eater, is not easy to tell. This I am sure, it is one of the most inconvenient ways of expence that vanity has yet found out; and so I leave them to the ladies.