ENGLISH EATING HABITS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19214, 31 December 1925, Page 7

ENGLISH EATING HABITS.

DETRIMENT TO HEALTH, THE VALUE OF FASTING. " If London was to experience an earthquake there would be a dinner to celebrate the occasion." This was one of the statements made by Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter, lecturing recently on "Common Ailments and Their Prevention." Minor ailments, ho said, were often only the symptoms or beginnings of serious conditions, and people blundered on until a bad breakdown occurred. It was a. common thing for patients to complain of overwork when their real condition was due to bad hygienic habits. The habit, for instance, of smoking in the middle of a meal, was fundamentally bad, and the taking of a cocktail before dinner was bound to defeat the best efforts of the most highly-skilled cook. Fresh air was vital to health, but patients often disliked it. In going through the wards he had heard the remark that "you are blown out of this hospital," and he had given the reply that if the patient were blown out he could walk back, but if he was carried out he could not. If only the time spent in curing disease, the lecturer argued, could he spent in preventing it, wonders could be worked. Much could lie done by fasting, and many a veterinary surgeon had established a great reputation by starving his clients. Numbers of human patients, lie contended, would benefit by such a course of treatment as had been preached by various religions. It was not to be wondered at that people suffered from headache when one realised the nature of the ordinary public dinner. A good all-round rule for those who liked meat was to have it at one meal only, to eat fish at- another, and one meal without either, Bolting food was the practice of carnivorous animals, and the public had bo conception of the harm that the practice did them.