DISEASE VERSUS DIET

Evening Star, Issue 23136, 9 December 1938, Page 1

DISEASE VERSUS DIET

Recent medical discoveries have given rise to the hope that it will be possible at some future date to stamp out, or at least greatly reduce, the incidence of disease by means of diet, writes the medical correspondent of the ‘ Sunday Times.’ We know, for example, that certain diseases such as rickets, beri-beri, and pellagra are due solely to the absence from our food of certain essential elements known as vitamins. When those elements are restored to the diet the diseases are prevented or cured. We know, too, that many conditions of illhealth, not sufficiently pronounced to bo called- diseases, are due to the lack of certain minerals from food, and can bo cured when those minerals are provided. More recent research suggests that diet may play a prominent part in the fight against the more deadly diseases caused by germs. Striking confirmation of this view has been provided by some experiments conducted by three workers at the London School of Medicine and Tropical Hygiene. They fed 100 mice on a normal diet. Another 100 they fed on a diet part of the oatmeal in which had been replaced by dried skimmed milk. The mice fed on skimmed milk resisted infection approximately twice as well as those without the milk. As the ‘ Lancet ’ points out, the results are. suggestive. If the addition of skimmed milk alone to the diet can double the power of resistance to infection, might not other foods enhance it still further? We have not yet reached the stage when dietitians can provide us with a diet that will enable us to resist all the attacks of germ infections. But these experiments give rise to the hope that wo may one day do so.