VALUABLE WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 103, 4 May 1931, Page 8

VALUABLE WORK.

TEACHING PEOPLE TO BAT. ; ' HEALTH DEPARTMENT'S * j , . ACTIVITIES. . . -Commenting . to-day ,on a. suggestion made at Onehunga, that the Health Department's functions should be extended in the direction of educating people how to eat and drink, and that, in a few years* time the-hospitals would not then be filled to overflowing as they were to-day, the Minister of Health, the Hon. A. J. Stall worthy, said that to suggest the Department of Health should do what it had actually, been doing for many years could hardly be called a new line of thought. Educating people on what and how to eat and drink had been one of the main functions of his Department.

Information and nutrition values and dietetics has been disseminated .hi a thousand ways. Millions of leaflets, booklets and volumes, innumerable newspaper articles, public lectures, radio talks, cinemas, district nursing and hospital services, the ech6ol medical serthe school . dental clinic system, special health campaigns, children's health camps, etc., were all mediums by which the Department was functioning with a view to educating people on "how and what to eat and drink." In this Sphere of preventive medicine there was in truth a magnificent record of work done. This embraced advice for all human; stages, from the unborn babe to the goijty grandfather. That we still had gouty grandfathers might lead one to believe not only that there was still a. great-deal to learn of nutrition values, but. also much scope for putting into practice the sumptuary edicts so freely disseminated by the Health Department. In this latter respect human-nature vms a-deriding iactoß, *