DIET AND HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 1, 1 July 1935, Page 3

DIET AND HEALTH

NEEDS OF THE BODY

EXPERTS TO CONFER

SLDDIIXG A"'MENACE

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, June 8.

• It has not yet been definitely decided whether a man engaged in moderate physical labour requires a diet containing only 3000 calories and 37 grammes of first-class protein, or whether he should.have 34Q0 calories and 50 grammes of. protein to keep him in .health. This momentous question has been under consideration for two years, arid now the Minister of Health has appointed another Advisory Committee to forward the study in the light of recent discoveries.

According to the terms of reference the Committee is to inquire into the facts, quantitative and qualitative, in relation- to the diet of the people and to report as to any changes therein which appear desirable in the light of modern advances in the knowledge of nutrition. . ...

The chairman oi: the Committee is Lord' Luke, who is chairman of the British Charities Association, chairman of Bovril, Ltd., and presides over the Industrial Plealth Education Committee. Among the other twenty members of the now Committee is Sir F. Gowland Hopkins, a' former president of the Royal Society. He is regarded'as one of the world's greatest authorities on diet, and was awarded the Order of Merit in the.Birthday Honours List. He won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1929, and last year was awarded the Royal Society oi Arts Albert Medal "for his researches in bio-chemistry and the constituents of foods." He played a prominent part in the discovery of vitamins. . . ' WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE. ■ Two years ago, the British Medical Association and . the University of Health were at variance.-The B.M.A. committee; which set up a standard of a weekly diet, costing 5s lOd as the minimum for adults, estimated that the normal man-required 3400 calories and 50 grammes of first-class protein daily. This was challenged by the Ministry, which declared, on the-advice of the first Advisory Committee, that a daily total of. 3000- calories and 37 grammes of protein, in a 4s lOd weekly diet, was enough. ■ An added importance was given to the scale by the.new Unemployment Act, which gave adequate nutrition an almost legal status under part 11, which was concerned with those thousands of unemployed on transitional payments. In the. House of Commons Labour members poured ■ contempt on what they considered the starvation allowance of 4s lOd per week. ' ■ ■ The divergence of opinion resulted in the appointment of a joint committee, which decided that' the differences were based on misunderstanding, and issued a sliding, scale by which the needs of individual men working at different jobs might be judged. The questions of calories and protein will doubtless be re-examined by the new Advisory Committee. The matter of the quality of diet should supply an even more difficult problem. Certainly, the mass production of cooked or half-cooked food—which is subsequently warmed up—by the great catering firms should provide a subject for discussion.. Another advantageous discussion would be the niggardly use of butter in this country. LORD HAREWOOD ON SLIMMING, An important 'aspect of the nation's health and diet was referred to at the annual congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health and the Institute of Hygiene. Lord Harewood was unable to be present, but his presidential address was read.' On tuberculosis, Lord Harewood wrote: "Here we have a disease which is definitely on the downward trend except, so I understand, in the young w omen ■ of : the • community. Whether the disastrous habit of slimming, which appears to mean depriving oneself of a proper food supply, has anything to do with the increase of tuberculosis among young women I do not know, but there would certainly seem to be some factor at work undermining their resistance to this disease." On this1 subject the medical correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" writes: — : ■ "It is perhaps doubtful whether there is any definite association between slimming and the development of pulmonary tuberculosis. But most doctors will be in full agreement with Lord Harewood's warning. "It is quite common, and probably a safeguard of Nature against the future,,for a certain amount of plumpness to. become manifest in young iyomen between the ages of 18 and 25. Nature usually adjusts this later on. "No: otherwise healthy > young woman ought'to engage in any artificial: measures for reducing-weight other than by par taking of plenty of regular and active exercise. The dangers to health, especially the nervous system, far' outweigh any possible advantages that' might accrue." ■ ■■ ■