NATIONAL HEALTH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 112, 14 May 1935, Page 5

NATIONAL HEALTH.

DIET REQUIREMENTS.

"HOSPITALS ALWAYS FULL."

MORS MILK AND VEGETABLES,

"When I see 95 per cent of the teeth perfect and necks the size they should be, then I can say New Zealand women can cook," said Dr. Marion White, of Dunedin, addressing the annual meeting of the Christchurch Sunlight League last week.

When Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe had said he was delighted to spend a number of years here, but he had commented on the fact that the hospitals were always full. That was true, and despite the fact that New Zealanders were a good, active people, with all the chances of being well, they did not come up to standard. The soil of New Zealand wae short of iodine. That being eo, they should take care to see that food was adequately equipped with the things that were lacking. lodine was to be found in vegetables, milk, eggs, oysters and fish, especially fish that fed on kelp, such as cod.

Vegetables that were cooked and the water thrown away were often deficient, and people who were carefully dieted did not, in many cases, do better than people who were left to look after themselves, said the speaker. The need to-day was for more knowledge and understanding.

The Deficiencies. What were the deficiencies that were found to be characteristic in New Zealand ? Every schoolboy knew that New Zealanders had the worst teeth in the world, and every visitor knew that the people had large necks. In 1925 it had been shown that 07 per cent of the people suffered from goitre.

What was wrong with the New Zealand people was that they ate too much meat and sugar. The speaker advocated the use of more milk, and said that whatever else was Lacking, milk should 'not be neglected. People, in objecting to milk, often said that

they could not bear to take it, or that they had been brought up on a farm. That was a direct challenge to the people to sec that the milk was so clean that people could not but like it. Another answer against drinking milk was that it was fattening. That was a universal belief, but if pepple substituted milk for chocolates and pastries they would find that they would be slin:. The speaker said she hoped the league would do all in its power to change the mistaken idea young girls had about milk. She advocated the eating of fruit and fresh vegetables.

Doctors Differ. Dr. Whyte said there was a shortage of mineral salts, including iodine, in the diet of the average New Zealamler, but this statement was challenged later by Dr. T. A. Mac Gibbon. Dr. Mac Gibbon said there was a shortage of iodine in only a very few places. in New

Zealand, and any statement that a lack of iodine caueed goitre should not be allowed to go unchallenged.

To this Dr. Whyte replied that in references she had made to the subject she had been speaking from experience, and an ounce of experience, she said, was worth tons of theory.