POOR N.Z. COOKS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 126, 14 May 1935, Page 10

POOR N.Z. COOKS

Cause of Full Hospitals BLAME PLACED ON WOMEN That the women of New Zealand must bear the responsibility for the great amount of illness in New Zealand because they do not know how to cook properly was an opinion expressed by Dr. Marion Whyte, of Dunedin, in an address on diet and health to the annual meeting of the Sunlight League on Friday evening in Christchurch. Dr. Whyte said that some of the women prided themselves on their cooking; but when she could see 95 per cent, cf the teeth in New Zealand sound and good and correct, then she would say that the women of New Zealand could cook. HOSPITALS FULL. Dr. Whyte drew attention to a state ment by Lord Bledisloe in an address when he was Governor-General of New Zealand in which he said that there seemed to be a great amount of illness in the Dominion. Lord Bledisloe had been correct, for the hospitals were always full. New Zealanders had many chances to be fine healthy people, but they did not come up to standard. The responsibility for this rested with the women, for they prepared the food. Speaking of diet, Dr. Whyte said some people held that carefully dieted persons were no better in health than any others.

“If that is so,” she said, “if knowledge cannot improve ignorance and care cannot improve on carelessness, (here is misdirection somewhere. Every schoolboy knows that New Zealanders have the worst teeth in the world. livery visitor talks about the

large necks here—67 per cent, of the people have goitre. And one in every two persons in New Zealand has gall bladder disease. ’ ’ These were our troubles, Dr. Whyte said, and they could be traced to diet. TOO MUCH SUGAR. New Zealanders, she said, ate too much sugar —more than anyone else in the world —too much meat, too little vegetables, and drank too little milk. They also had too little of fresh fruit. Dr. Whyte said there was a shortage of mineral salts, including iodine, in the diet of the average New Zealander, hut this statement was challenged later by Dr. T. A. Mac Gibbon. Dr. MaeGibbon said there was a shortage of iodine in only a very few places in New Zealand and any statement that a lack of iodine caused goitre should not be allowed to go unchallenged. To this Dr. Whyte relied that in references she had made to the subject she had been speaking from experience, and an ounce of experience, she said, was worth tons of theory.