This is why every grocery store, every butcher shop, every fish market, and every confectioner's shows such a great variety of different kinds of foods put up and prepared in all sorts of ways.

Although nearly two-thirds of the actual fuel which we put into our body-boilers is in the form of a dozen or fifteen great staple foods, like bread, meat, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, potatoes, and fish, yet all the lighter foods, also, are needed for perfect health.
It is possible, by careful selection, and by taking a great deal of trouble, to supply all the elements of the body from animal foods alone, or from vegetable foods alone.

But practically, it has everywhere, and in all ages, been found that the best and most healthful diet is a proper combination of animal and vegetable foods.

Our starches, for instance, which furnish most of our fuel,--though they give us _comparatively little_ to _build up_, or _repair_, the body with,--are found, as we have seen, in the vegetable kingdom, in grains and fruits; while most of our proteins and fats, which chiefly give us the materials with which to build up, or repair, the body, are found in the animal kingdom.

There is no advantage whatever in trying to exclude either animal food or vegetable food from our dietary.