MILK IN DAILY DIET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22320, 18 January 1936, Page 10

MILK IN DAILY DIET

IMPORTANCE TO CHILDREN BRITISH SCIENTIST'S VIEWS RESEARCH ON DIETETICS "Any child who gets loss than at least a pint of milk a clay is not being given a fair chance," states Dr. Leslie Harris, of the Nutritional Laboratory, Cambridge University, and the Medical Research Council, in a reeently-pub-

lished popular work entitled " Vitamins in Theory and Practice," in which he deals with the present state of knowledge about those mysterious food constituents. Ho mentions the good work being done in New Zealand, among other countries, in pioneering the giving of milk to schoolchildren. Striking evidence is given of the result of additional milk in the diet of children in England. In' one case a group at an orphanage, at which the food was already considered to be very goodj was given an extra pint of milk a head daily. "The effects of the extra milk were scarcely believable," I)r. Harris states. "Those children having it put on weight nearly twice as fast as those on the normal ration. In other ways, too, the physique and health were improved strikingly by this generous abundance of milk." Benefits from Research When a representative of the Canadian Government visited the institution to choose suitable, strong-looking children to be sent as emigrants to Canada it was found, after making his choice, that those he had selected nearly all came from the milk group. Outlining the incalculable benefits that have come to mankind resulting from the application of research work on dietetics Dr. Harris points out that a generation and a-half ago rickets of a most severe type were common in the big cities, with a large number of people suffering from lifelong disability of bow legs, knock-knees and crooked limbs. To-day severe rickets is rare. Fifty years ago babies were brought up too largely on floury substitutes for milk or on skimmed and evaporated milk with no vitamin additions. To-day this has been changed with the insistence on the value of good fresh milk, and the necessity of supplementing it with cod liver oil or other ■ vitamin source. Value of Fresh Fruit

Beri-beri, from which countless thousands lost their lives in the East, and which was caused mainly by eating polished rice, is now a preventive disease, and pellagra, from which 7000 people died in one year in the United States recently, can now be prevented with certainty. Scurvy, too, the dread of mariners and people in isolated communities in Northern Europe, including the British Isles during the winter months, has been largely conquered by the use of Iresh fruit. "It is certainly a fact that many of us eat insufficient fresh fruit "and salad," continues Dr. Harris. "We n<ed these foods especially for their vitamin C.* Many people rely toe exclusively on potatoes for this vitamin and, in consequence, get just a bare minimum of it and scarcely that. This is proved by the fact that whenever there is an acute shortage of potatoes, definite attacks of acute scurvy break out, as happened in 1917 in Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow and elsewhere. Such risks would be obviated by the consumption of one orange a day." Progress and Prospects Another marked diet deficiency mentioned is that of the body-building part of food, the protein. "There is little doubt," Dr. Harris remarks, "that many children in working class families and sometimes in the middle class, too, have none too much to spare. They are almost certainly short if they do not get, at one meal every day, a good helping of lean meat, or fish or cheese. Milk must also be added to the list of important sources of protein. In the case of infants and very young children it is naturally the y only source, and, even with older children, it is almost impossible to give too Oiuch milk." "When we look back," concludes Dr. Harris, "and recall the progress already made in preventive medicine and remember,* for example, how in the present century the infant deathrate in England has been halved, and how the normal expectancy of life has been increased; when Ave realise that in a few short years rickets has been all but vanquished by the newer knowledge of nutrition, and when, lastly, we consider the striking evidence recently gained of how much can be done to improve health, stature and physique by purely dietary means, can anyone doubt that we have here the key to the building of a future race which, when compared with our own, will seem as 'men like gods.' "