A GROWING SCIENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22464, 7 July 1936, Page 3

A GROWING SCIENCE

IMPORTANCE OF DIET DEVELOPMENTS ABROAD "Diet is coming into greater prominence all over the world and it is today one of the most important and advancing branches of modern science," said Miss Mary Dean who arrived at Auckland yesterday by the Niagara on route to Australia. Miss Dean left Australia over a year ago to study diet and homo economics in England and in the United States. She also spent some timo in Scotland and Ireland, and during her experience abroad has made many contacts that have given her some idea of the work being done in the teaching of correct diet and ways of living in Russia and tho East.

Lead of United States Dietitians and students were doing an amazing amount of work in both England and Scotland, said Miss Dean. They were working 011 an organised educational plan that included addresses at various women's organisations in town and country, particularly at mothers' meetings, stressing the advantages of fruit, milk, butter and cheese as the foods most beneficial to health. Fruit she had found cost 110 more in England than it did in Australia. Tho world had still a great deal to learn from tho United States in the matter of diet, said Miss Dean. Although the United States were everywhere regarded as the lioine of "freak" diets, these were really more individual than general and fundamentally the diet of Americans was very sound. They were a people who believed almost fanatically in physical fitness and their home science schools possessed the largest number of dietetic students in the world. During her period of study at the home economics school in New York, Miss Dean was interested to seo tho different nationalities of many of tho ntudents. Women from China, Japan, India and Russia worked sido by side and exchanged information and ideas in the common search for knowledge that would enable them to return to their various countries and give their people the benefit of their studies. She had found the Russian students amazingly hard-working with a desire for learning that was unequalled by the other students. School Dietitians All hospitals abroad, said Miss Dean, were becoming increasingly interested in diet, all the large hospitals in Edinburgh, London and the capital cities of the United States employing dietitians. In the States there was even the new profession of consulting dietitian while large boarding schools in England and particularly in the United States were employing dietitians as well as matrons.

The general trend everywhere, said Miss Dean, seemed to be to stress the importance of fruit, milk, cheese and butter as the important diet foods with green vegetables being regarded as almost as important. In America, fruit was the most important item on every menu served in countless different ways and combinations. As a nation the Americans had no real love of meat and preferred poultry and fish to "red" meats when they wished for meat.