A “PERFECT FOOD.”

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 217, 14 September 1936, Page 10

A “PERFECT FOOD.”

RECIPE for health. LONDON, July 22. Essentials of diet were discussed at the British Medical Association conference at Oxford to-day, says the Evening Standard. Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison said that there was a new conception of causes and origins of disease, which might be summed up in the sequence—faulty food, faulty nutrition, faulty function, faulty structure, faulty health, disease. Foodstuffs which, when properly combined, were known to ensure perfect nutrition and a high grade of physical efficiency and health, were: A good whole cereal grain or mixture of whole cereal grains or a good wholemeal bread; milk and the products of milk—'butter, cheese, curds buttermilk; eggs, green leaf vegetables, root vegetables—potatoes, carrots, etc.; legumes, fruit, meat, water.

Sir Robert added: “The need for surgery will lessen, certainly, in the treatment of internal diseases, when the people learn to feed themselves properly and have the means to do so, and when the profession learns to lead them along the healthful ways of nutrition.”

Dr. n. M. B. Mac Kenna, speaking of common errors of diet contributing to skin diseases, said: "Men are not so addicted to food fadism as women.

“We still enjoy our bacon and egg breakfast, the light luncheon in the middle of the day, and the heavy meal, with its preponderance of proteins at night, and on this not too well-bal-anced regimen we manage to keep fairly fit. "’But so far as the upper middle classes are concerned the diet of- the women is changing—or has changed. "bio longer does the lady of the house have the same breakfast as her husband.

“Half a grapefruit or some orange juice, some thin dry toast or rye bread and a cup of tea or coffee suffice for her matutinal needs.

Unbalanced,

"For lunch she appears to enjoy lettuce, cheese and biscuits, or some similar fare. Afternoon tea is but a shadow of its former self. But at dinner -she keeps pace with her husband.

"The result is that after one meal her stomach has to cope with approximately GO or 70 per cent of her daily nutriment."