CAUSES OF ILLNESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 March 1946, Page 3

CAUSES OF ILLNESS

FAULTY NUTRITION A MAIN FACTOR ROCKETING HEALTH COST (P.A.) NAPIER, March 20. The suggestion that efforts should be made to reach the core of sickness with the object of prevention rather than cure was made at the conference of Rotary Clubs in the 53rd District at Napier yesterday by Rotarian Blair Tennent, of Palmerston North, when he urged that faulty nutrition was the basic cause of many of to-day’s illnesses.

“The cost of sickness in the various countries of the world is enormous,” he said. “In New Zealand in 1944 sickness cost the Government over £8,250,000. Hospital boards have indicated that for the next five years £13,000,000 will be spent on buildings alone. For the year ended March 31, 1945, the estimated public expenditure of public hospitals on capital and maintenance alone was over £5,500,000, quite apart from the works financed by loan money.” Highest in World Mr. Tennent pointed out that the number of hospital beds in New Zealand had risen to 10.2 per 1000, which was the highest in the world. “These are huge figures,” he said, “and when one studies their growth year by year one is compelled to ask if we are building a healthy nation.” Rotarian Tennent expressed the conviction that much of the sickness came from faulty nutrition, coupled with the people’s mode of living. Because of the pace at which they lived, people often at middle age found themselves unable to get ahead. They began to worry and adopted a defeatist attitude towards life and became afflicted by diseases which were of a nervous origin. Anything, therefore, on the economic side which could be done to bring a feeling of security to these people, anything which could be done to give them happiness in their home and the feeling that they had a stake in the country should be really encouraged. '

Nutritional Foods

Dealing with faulty nutrition Rotarian Tennent instanced the case of the Maori race, which he described as one of the greatest physical degenerative changes in the world. At the advent of the white man the Maori was regarded as the finest native race in the world. His features and physique were unsurpassed. His dental condition, which after all was only a symptom of his general condition, showed fine broad arches and only one tooth in 2000 showed signs ol dental caries. To-day, they found that generally the race was of poor physique, the dental arches were narrow and at the' same time 95 teeth out of every 100 were carious. The diet of the primitive Mao\’i consisted of fish, shell fish, sea clams, paua, fern roots and mutton birds. When he ate his fish he always ate the heart and liver, which contained oils rich in vitamin D, and which the white people always threw away. Today his diet consisted of white flour products, sugar, polished rice, jams, canned food and vegetables. “Here we have in a nutshell the main cause for the degeneration of that noble race,” he said. He did not suggest that everyone should resoit to that diet, but he did think a good lesson could be drawn from it.