MEN OVER FORTY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 November 1924, Page 13

MEN OVER FORTY.

DIET AND EXERCISE

SYDNEY, Out. 14. What should a man over 40 eat, and how should he exercise,? Dr. J. S. Purdy, City Medical Officer, and Dr. Harvey Sutton, principal medical, officer in the Department ot Education, let the commercial travellers into a few things during the lunch hour yesterday. Dr. Purdy said it did not matter much what- a man ate so long as his diet included certain protective foods coming under the head of vitamines. Fresh milk—not pasteurised or boiled —lettuce, white cabbage, and fruit were essentials, in a complete menu, particularly the vegetables and fruit. But over-eating in anything was not conductive to health. ‘ ‘General Birdwood is one of the most virile men I ever met,” Dr. Purdy remarked. “Peace or war, he rises early, retires'late, and keeps up intense activity in between. He told me that he ascribed his virility to the fact that he didn’t have the usual mid-day meal.”

Captain Cook’s feat in bringing a crew from the Old World to Botany Bay without a case of scurvy was recited by Dr. Purdy as showing the value of food containing vitamines. Fruit, he said, should be taken at every meal. Dr. Harvey Sutton mentioned that for the first time in the world’s history men over 40 years were now in the majority, the expectancy of life haying been advanced 18 years during the last couple of generations. He assessed the capital value of the average professional man at about £17,000, and, asked what were the limits to attention and care that would be bestowed on a racehorse valued at that figure. Yet, he commented, most men were indifferent as to their diet and exercise. The fact had been revealed in the astonishingly large percentage of rejects among the war recruits under conscription in New Zealand. Every man in Australia who reached the age of 20 bad an even-money chance of going on to 70. Dr. Harvey Sutton commended surfing and swimming as ideal forms of exercise, but, unfortunately, -he said, the necessary facilities were frequently absent.

. There were only three public swimming baths west of the Great Dividing Range, where over half a million people lived.

If the same amount of research were applied r to cancer and dental diseases as’ had been to aviation and radio, both menaces would be under man’s control in less than five veaEs.