BETTER FOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 9

BETTER FOOD.

IMPROVING NUTRITION,

GENEVA, September 17,

Mr. Bruce expounded at length to the League of Nations Assembly the reasons actuating Australia's initiative in the movement to improve nutrition throughout the world. Nutrition, he said, was by far the most important factor influencing public health, and what had been accomplished xvould be nothing beside what might be achieved if the scientific discoveries made were more completely utilised.

Quoting the infantile mortality rate in Australia and New Zealand as a demonstration of their relation to nutiition, owing to the high consumption of health preserving foodstuffs, Mr. Bruce said tlmt even in richer countries a substantial portion of the poorer classes were living on diets that could be regarded only as deficient.

All were painfully familiar with the agricultural crisis, but was it not possible that the new knowledge of the importance of nutrition to public health might open the way to a solution of the world's agricultural problem ?

While Ministers of Agriculture were wrestling with the problems of overproduction, Ministers of Health were realising more and more the necessity for increased consumption of the very products about which Ministers of Agriculture were so unhappy. It was necessary that the League's health organisation should investigate the question and obtain expert reports on the benefits to health which would follow a greater consumption of protective foods. The world's agricultural production declined 0 per cent during the 1934-35 period, according to the League's economic survey. The output of industrial rawmaterials increased 0 per cent, and the index of general industrial activity rose . 10 per cent.