THE CULT OF BEAUTY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE CULT OF BEAUTY

Appearances Depend Upon Health.

SIX QUESTIONS ON FOOD CHEMISTRY.

(By A SPECIALIST.)

CAN beauty exist without health? It cannot, for our senses are dissatisfied if the object called beautiful is withered and sickly, and we are correspondingly pleased with evidences of vibrant health regardless of regular or irregular features. We are influenced by smell, touch and voice sounds, as well as by sight, more than we realise, and the persons we at first deemed beautiful to our vision lost their attractiveness when judged by our other senses and found to have bad breath and hoarse voice. The first and most important question concerns the chemistry of food, and we will take up the subject in the simple form of question and answer this week. First Question: How many forms of food are there and how are they divided 1 Answer: There are three forms of food. They occur as (a) carbohydrates, which is the chemical name for sugar and starchy foods; (b) hydrocarbons, which we commonly call fats, (c) pro- ' teids, or lean meats, and the protein materials from vegetables. Second Question: Why do we eat so many kinds of food? Answer: Because no one food contains all the materials necessary for the repair of the body. Third Question: I have been told that different kinds of food when taken together, help digestion, and other foods if taken at the same time, hinder digestion. How can this be possible ? Answer: The reason different foods have an effect on digestion when taken together is the effect of stomach secretions upon them. The sugar and starchy foods cause stomach secretions to flow freely, but they do not use the secretions and pass rapidly into the small intestine for digestion. The lean meats take up all the stomach secretion that flows in, like a dry sponge dropped in a bowl of water, and this effect causes considerable digestive changes in the meat before it leaves the stomach. You see, therefore, that sugar and starchy foods work well with lean meat, but fat does not work so well when taken with the other food, because it decreases the flow of stomach secretions, and is digested very slowly as it reaches the small intestine. This .is the reason why meat and butter have not been taken together by some of the older races in civilisation; and bread, which is a starchy food, was taken with butter instead. Fourth Question: What do you mean by chemistry of food? Answer: The word chemistry means change, and we use it to mean the change of form in the foods we eat. We must realise that we are made up of the food we * digest and distribute to our tissues each day.

Literally, by saying "chemistry of food," we mean the changes which occur in food when it is taken apart or disintegrated and changed into another form. Fifth Question: Will you explain the chemistry of digestion? Answer: The first stage in the chemistry of digestion is answered in three of this series. The second and most important stage takes place in the small intestine. The food passes from the stomach to the small intestine in small quantities with a balance of acidity in the stomach and alkalinity in the intestines. This regulation permits the powerful intestinal and pancreE.tic secretions, which are alkaline, in reacting to complete digestion, or food changes, so that the food can be taken into the blood in tlio regular order in which it was needed by the tissues of the body. Sixth Question: I have a heavy feeling in my stomach several hours after eating, with a slight headache, and my skin is dry and rough in places. Is this due to wrong eating? Answer: Take smaller quantities of food and less fat. The sugar and starchy foods should leave the stomach in ten minutes to one hour, the lean meats and vegetables in from one to three hours, and it takes the fats as long as eight hours to reach the small intestine. By regulating the diet and limiting the quantity taken you will shorten the time of stomach digestion, and find the heaviness, headache and skin conditions all improve. Some General Rules. It is a good general rule to take starchy foods for breakfast, with no meats or fats. At luncheon take a little meat or eggs, with bread or salad, and at dinnerj take the combinations of fats, meat and vegetables, because a longer interval for digestion is possible between dinner and breakfast. Very few people drink too much water and many people drink too little. It is a good plan to eat small portions of food, as there is a limit to our digestive capacities, and we obtain more nourishment from small quantities of well-digested food than from greater amounts incompletely changed. Incomplete digestion means food changes of an injurious character which typify themselves in skin changes, which no cosmetics can disguise. The crux of the food, question as it pertains to health is balance. Let us learn to balance our diet so that we can eat just enough, and not too much, for perfect digestion. With a little knowledge of the effects of different combinations of food, and yarying quantities of the same, compared with the other factors stated and the amount of exercise and work performed, requiring repair changes in the body, we can adjust dietetics to suit our individual cases.