Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1935. FOOD AND HEALTH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 292, 23 September 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1935. FOOD AND HEALTH.

The subject of the co-ordination of health and agricultural administrations, dealt with in a resolution moved by Mr Bruce at the League Assembly, is one of importance to both producers and consumers. The resolution in effect urges the various governments to examine practical means of bringing about increased consumption of foods, and invites the League Council to instruct its technical organisations to collect information on the measures of various countries for improved nutrition through increased consumption of food. The proposal follows the publication by the League of a document in which it is shown that alarge proportion of the world’s population lives on a diet inadequate to support good health, although sufficient to avert hunger. No country in the world, the report points out, can claim that the whole of its population is satisfactorily fed. Poverty and ignorance, but mainly poverty, are to blame. The cheapest forms of food contain little but carbohydrates; and the axiom "Man cannot live by bread alone” expresses a physical as well as a spiritual fact. The so-called "protective” foods, richest in minerals.and vitamins —milk, green vegetables, fresh fruit, eggs—-are also the most ex pensive, and in all countries beyond the means of great masses of the population. According to the report, between ten and twenty-four per cent, of the population of Great Britain "cannot afford a diet of the type and quality now known to be essential as a safeguard against malnutrition and disease.” There is also a further group who could afford a complete diet but who do not, through ignorance, procure one. So long as such conditions exist, states the report, it is clear that overproduction of foodstuffs does not exist in the world as a whole. Even in the United States there is not enough land under cultivation' at present to supply the whole population with a liberal diet. As Sir James Parr stated, the problem is to bring the produce of the world’s farms to the mouths of those who have no money, but the solution does not not lie with the provision of funds by the State. To find money for the proper nourishment of all the poor is impossible and to deal with only a small section would be simply tinkering with the evil in a most futile way and at enormous cost. The remedy lies, so far as the actual poor are concerned, in a general amelioration o. their lot by social legislation and other means, and as far as the group classed as ignorant are concerned m education as to the quality and values of various foodstuffs. _____