Diet of Subtropical Regions.—Subtropical people are more for tunate than those of monsoon regions. Wheat, their staple crop, is among the best articles of diet, especially if one product has to be used as the main food. It is somewhat starchy, but as the sub tropical regions are favorable to domestic animals, especially sheep, there is plenty of meat to supply proteids. Moreover, both fruits and nuts thrive admirably in subtropical countries, especially under irrigation, so that the best kind of diet is available.
The food supply of subtropical regions is favorable not only because it contains a healthful proportion of proteids, carbohydrates and fats, but because it renders such regions less liable to famines than are those that depend on rice or millet with beans or peas. A poor wheat crop is not accompanied by a failure of the supply of proteids. When a dry season causes poor crops in subtropical regions where animals are abundant, the price of meat may even go down for a while. This is because the scarcity of pasture, fodder, and grain makes it impossible for people to keep all their animals. Therefore, many of them are sold for slaughter; thus when the carbohydrate supply is short,the proteid supply tends for a while to increase. In the rice and millet countries the beans and peas are likely to fail at the same time with the cereals, since all depend upon the same rains. The failure of both kinds of food produces correspondingly severe famines.
Diet of Cyclonic Regions.—The cyclonic zone is the most favor able part of the world in respect to food as well as in other ways, for four main reasons: (1) there is a great variety of good food; (2) it is constantly available; (3) it is well cooked; and (4) it is served regu larly.
(1) Not only does the cyclonic zone raise as great a variety as the subtropical zone except perhaps in the matter of fruits, but it brings still other varieties from other climates. On the farms people usually
raise several kinds of grain and vegetables as well as apples or other fruits, chickens, eggs, and cows. In the towns because of the activity of trade, food of every kind comes from all parts of the world. Even in winter the markets provide fresh fruits from tropical countries and green vegetables with their health-preserving vitamines from regions like Florida and Tripoli. Only among the most ignorant and poverty stricken people is there danger from great monotony of diet. All wise people, even though their means are limited, eat a sufficient variety to maintain health and vigor. Thus all the necessary food elements are supplied in due proportion.
(2) The people of cyclonic regions are rarely troubled by scarcity to-day and an excess of perishable food to-morrow. They need not half starve and then gormandize, as frequently happens to the people of all the less favored regions except the subtropical zone.
(3) In the cyclonic regions far more than elsewhere food is, on the whole, well cooked. This makes it much more appetizing than the raw or half-cooked food eaten by people like the Eskimos and the dwellers in the tropical jungle. Moreover, thorough cooking guards against disease by killing a great many germs.
(4) The people of cyclonic regions have the further advantage of having their meals at regular hours, three times a day. This not only economizes time, but is much better for health than are the irregular meals of tropical people who eat when they happen to ob tain food.
With all these advantages the strong well-fed people of the cy clonic zone owe it to the rest of the world to teach the more backward races how to insure themselves a constant supply of varied food properly prepared.