VITAMIN B

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1927, Page 9

VITAMIN B

ITS HIDING PLACE. To-day we hear more than ever of the benefits that come from eating the kindly fruits of the earth; indeed, “Eat More Fruit” are words constantly on the lips of doctors and those who are interested in the health of the nation, states “K. 8. in the “Morning Post.” The pity is that good, sound fruit remains comparatively expensive.

The homely apple and the cheerful orange ought to be both good and cheap: cheap enough not to be a treat, but to be eaten freely by everybody. The orange especially should be cheap, because it is within its golden heart that the rollicking, jovial vitamin B lies concealed. Not even “Tono Bungay’s” happy phagocyte is so valuable to mankind as vitamin B. Orange juice may not be the cure for every earthly ’JI —there are some woes behind tho ministrations of vitamins—but it certainly tends to increase good health, and has a most beneficial effect upon all those evil germs that are ever lying wait for the unwary. In the diary of a becrinolined young lady, who danced all night and every night in the ’fifties and ’sixties, reference is constantly made to the 12 or 18 oranges she ate before going to bed after dances. ■ Now, in those days no one ate for health, and assuredly no one had heard of vitamins, but 1 have often wondered if the youthful vigour and super-abundant vitality that distinguished the orange-eater up to the age of 9S—a. 98 that was more like a young GO!—had anything to do with those quantities of oranges eaten in the early ’twenties. To-day it is the juice of the orange that is so highly recommended. Are we now such a feeble folk that we cannot grapple with the whole orange? Surely Miss Deborah Jenkins and Miss Matty, each in tire sacred privacy of her own chamber, accompanied by an orange and lumps of sugar, ate their oranges, after they had sucked the juice, in a manner comfortable, but not quite ladylike, according to the rigid etiquette of “Cranford.” There may today be people who cannot even manage orange juice, 'let alone a whole stout orange. Let them dilute the juice with cold water, and. if they still do not feel quite happy, follow the orange juice and water with lemon juice and water, and alb will be well. If Master Vitamin B was hunting the world over to find a home, he could not have discovered a pleasanter abode from which to radiate health and vitality to feeble mankind than the innermost heart of a golden orange. *