EAT AND BE MERRY!

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 13

EAT AND BE MERRY!

EXPERTS AND DIET. ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. (By HERBERT FANE) For the purposes of this story imagine a little man, living, probahiy, in one of London's outer suburbs, who Ims read all the expert advice on diet which has , been published in the newspapers, and who, with characteristic British doggodness, has attempted to follow- this advice, writes Herbert Fane in the London "Chronicle." A few months ago, while he was enjoying an excellent breakfast of bacon and eggs, his jaundiced eye fell upon a headline, "Poison in the Breakfast I Bacon," and he went on to rend how a I food crank had discovered that half our 1 intestinal troubles are due to the consumption of salted pig's flesh. Discarding his unfinished meal, he told his wife that he would never allow | bacon in the house again, and the next | morning she provided him with boiled j eggs. j He had scarcely decapitated the first egg when, glancing at his newspaper, !ho read some remarks by Professor Y. IH. Mottram. Millionaires' Diet. "Adulation of eggs is absurd."' said the professor, "and the value of them as a food is exploded. Eggs and white ! fish are food for millionaires only." "All right," said the little man. "I'm not a millionaire. No more eggs and fish for mc." The next morning his wife placed a large bowl of porridge hefore him, say- ; ing, "You must eat something nourishing, dear, or you'll pet run down."' I "All!" said the little man, attacking I the porridge, "nothing like natural, | healthy food. This is the stuff that I has made Scotsmen what they an?, and put them where they are." | Scarcely were the words uttered when he read the following remarks by Professor Mellanby: "Oatmeal has preeminently the worst influence on bone formation, and after that come maize and barley, rice, and wheaten flour, the last having the least detrimental effects. Scotsmen have built up their magnificent frames on milk, eggs, herrings and salmon." Only Spinach Left. "Eggs," whispered the little man, i dropping his porridge spoon, "but I I thought eggs . . ." | For a long time he continued to read the advice of experts, and eventually ; almost everything in his daily menu was J. excluded by the devastating criticism of '. science. Just when he was beginning to like milk he was informed that all milk was tubercular. Indeed, one sage went so far as to say that all dairy produce was poison. And then the prdfessors attacked his Sunday dinner. They said that it was sheer suicide to eat meat of any description, and that only savages made cemeteries of their insides. Potatoes produced gout, ft roeu vegetables, unless eaten raw, wore to I much waste matter. I By this time the only food left to him I was raw spinach, and, finding that diet I unpalatable and unsustaining, he begun 1 searching the newspapers for fresh in- | formation. Imagine his relief, there- | fore, when he read what Dr. Leonard I Williams had to say about food. ! Fits' from Eggs. I "People should eat the right kind of I food," said Dr. Williams brightly, and added, "such as dairy produce, salad, and fruits." Encouraged by this advice, the little I man began eating again—until he | saw an extract from the "Lancet"' | which told a poignant story of a man I who had a fit every time he ate an egg. | Wearied, but still dogged, he thou ; read what Dr. AYood Hutchinson, an . American, had to say about meat: "The i most important single factor in common , sense diet is meat, and lots of it. It is i the best food ever invented, and tins j instincts which prompt people to eat it are sound aud good." Sweets Made With Soil. Cheered by this advice, the gallant little Briton went back to his chops and : roast beef, but hardly had he begun to j eujoy them when he read another e.\- ---■ tract from the "Lancet" which gave an account of a woman who used to scream after eating meat. He was also disi couraged by the opinion of Dr. Lapj thorne-Smith, who said that meat-eat-ing produced wife-beaters. I He was now in a state of mind when he would eat anything—a professor for preference. His final bewilderment occurred when ihe road the remarks of Dr. Blob, si French surgeon, who advised everybody to eat dirt in order to be healthy. "The whole question is one of adapting the , human organs to strange foods," said ' Dr. Blob. "There is a certain blackish soil in India which makes an excellent sweetmeat when mixed with grasses and leaves. . . ." After that the little man read no more advice on diet. "If I am to die of eating," he said, "let mc die of over-eating." And so he followed his natural instincts about food, ate everything that the experts condemned—and lived heartily ever after.