GOOD CHEER.

Evening Star, Issue 14250, 27 December 1909, Page 1

GOOD CHEER.

It-may quite safely be concluded that at this season of the year, when good cheer is temptingly displayed in shop windows and market places, when larders are well replenished-in anticipation of social entertainment, and when all the sons of want are blest (at least as far as having 6cant feeding replaced by temporary abundance), the gastronomic reformers will raise their alarms in vain. It is very little use proclaiming from the housetop that men dig their graves with their teeth while sweet savors rise from the kitchen to the dining room with appetising persistence. By-and-bye, when cupboards are leaner, and perchance a touch of dyspepsia induces a mental resolution to keep the body in subjection for the future, food reformers may stand a chance of getting a hearing, but for the moment dinner-table restrictions find no favor. Importunate advocates of no-breakfast, no-dinner, no-cookery panaceas are warned off with the evasive promise that "in a more convenient season I will 6end for thee." Meanwhile the firstlings of flocks are hurried to the abattoirs, poultry yards are decimated, darkness 6eals the eyes of gentle porkers, the sea is made to give an extra toll of flatfish, and gardens become a cornucopia for the supply of fruits to give completeness to universal hospitalities. Nor is it likely that food reformers will ever bring about a radical change in the general feeding in British communities, whether their activities are carried on beneath the Great Bear or the Southern Cross. On the authority of a West End physician, the London ' Daily Telegraph'' ha 6 been telling its readers that our U6ual diet is directly opposed to health, and that some reform is needed in the prevalent system of popular dietary, which can be shown to contain far too much meat. This authority. emphasises the fact "that when we come to "carefully consider the composition of the "meat foods in common use we find that "whilst they certainly possess a high "nutritive value, they contain also a "large series of compounds which are "actually injurious to certain of our "organs, and in certain states of health "become definite poisons." Thi6 medical authority is, however, no faddist, for he points out that most of the foods in common use consist of mixtures of the important physiological elements (protcids, carbohydrates, and fats) in varying proportions, and should find an important place in the diet of persons living outdoor lives and accustomed to constant muscular work; whilst lighter proteid foods (game, fish, eggs, and cheese) are more suitable articles of diet for town-dwellers leading sedentary lives. Speaking from professional experience, the same writer states that the actual results of a modified diet of fish, chicken, game, and eggs for butchers' meat has been followed by distinct and lasting benefit to health. Meat, says he, is good for us in moderate quantities, no doubt, but, taken two. or'three times a day, as in not a few town households, it can only lead to the accumulation of poisons in the system, and eventually result in the impairment of health. This physician's word of caution should be taken to heart by that increasing number of people everywhere, not excepting Dunedin, who are making ill-directed efforts to cure real or fancied ailments by adopting extreme dietary treatment. He says :- It is unfortunato that food reformers so often tend to become extremists, because, whilst there is doubtless room for reform in the diet of the average town dweller, it is likely that much harm may be done by advocating a diet that is naturally unsuited to the human system, and which tends to deprive it of animal proteids, which experience has shown to be re-ally essential to the maintenance of health in the case of the average individual. Extreme fads in diet may happen to suit a few enthusiasts, but every physician of experience has witnessed the unfortunate consequences of faddist experiments in dietetics tried on unsuitable persons. It should be remembered that digestion may bo readily deranged by an irrational diet, with possible permanent inJ.ury to health.

It. can hardly be contended that this caution is unnecessary in view of the extraordinary lengths that dietetic extravagance is urging people to go. Do you, cries one reformer, want to conquer disease, save doctors' bills, cooks' wages, to discover the elixir of youth, retain a graceful figure, to live to be a centenarian? Then become a lacto-vegetarian, and give thirty-two chews to every bite of food, and then you will be able to do with one meal in every six or eight hours, and will experience delightful exhilaration, and learn the real meaning of the joy of life. Fletchcrism goes much further in this direction, and would persuade humans to become ruminants, promising that marvellous results will follow. The late Mr Gladstone believed in forty chews to each mouthful, but, according to Mr Howard Fletcher, food must be chewed until it becomes a "cream" and melts down the gullet of its own accord, even if it is munched, ".and munched, and munched after'the fashion that vexed the witches! in 'Macbeth' who came across a wife, with-a'lap full of chestnuts. JNarrating personal experience, Mr Fletcher describes himself as old at forty, a martyr to indigestion, a prey to influenza, on the highway to consumption, and a " poor risk " from a life insurance point of view. Then he came across a friend who had tried the Gladstone philosophy of mastication, adopted it, and chewed his way to robust health by first getting rid of 601b of surplus fat. On his fiftieth birthday he rode hi 6 bicycle over 200 miles of French, roads, "and came homo feeling fine." Next day he rode fifty miles on his bicycle before breakfast. For several years Mr Fletcher, in endeavoring to proclaim the virtues of his system, was as one crying in the wilderness, but in three week 6 hf> made " a new man" of an Italian doctor who wae a chronic dyspeptic, and then followed the conversion of several university professors, in England and America. From being physically weak he became in his fifty-eighth year able to lift 7701b dead weight with the muscles of his back and legs, without training. "All these stunts," 6ays the rejuvenated Fletcher, "were done on two meals a "day—one at noon and the other at six "o'clock in the evening—at an average " cost of s£d per day." In America there are said to be more than 20,000 families livina '2~zz£z~: '*~ Fleteherism; but the

way new fads,.no matter how absurd or outrageous to common sense, catch on with our. Transatlantic friends has long ceased to be- a matter of astonishment. They have a saner way of ascertaining food, values in the mother Country. Last October a fortnight's route match by twenty men and officers under service conditions was. performed by a contingent of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. They carried equipments weighing 521b, were accompanied by a medical officer to note results, and lived on bare service rations. On the average they lost five pounds in weight and one inch in chest measurement, but they all came back "fit." One private, who is a short-distance runner, admitted that he was in better condition at the end of the "hunger march" than he was usually when he entered for races. Food faddists notwithstanding, the majority of us are not likely from choice, necessity, or conviction to abandon the fleshpots to such an extent as to bring about a sltunp in the meat market or to threaten flockmasters with ruin. On the contrary, we shall in nil probability continue to use w ; th sincerity Robbie Burns's grace before meat:— Some hae meat they canna eat, And some would eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, So let the Lord be thankit.