PREVENTION OF ILL-HEALTH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 19

PREVENTION OF ILL-HEALTH

Sir,—l would liko to add to remarks made in your columns by " Health for All " and "Health Reform." Of course, it should bo obvious, to any thinking person that the time lias arrived when we, as a community, should advocate spending money in propaganda, teaching our fellow citizens some of the fundamentals of healthy living. With approval and great applause, Ave spend our millions in the care of tho sick and injured, and rightly so, but would it not be infinitely better as a sound business proposition to prevent this national asset from being incapacitated, to say nothing of the pain and suffering of the individuals concerned. Admitted that there are many roads to health and to disease and at times the average person is bewildered as to which road to follow, but there are certain fundamentals which I am confident we nearly all agree are to the good and contribute toward good, health. Take the matter of over-eating. Tho profession and the laymen agree about this gravo habit, which is tho cause of much &f our misery, yet we go gaily on without any serious thought about tho question. Hdnry Ford says, " The commonest thing wo do is the thing we know least about —eating." Let a person buy a car and they soon know a good deal about it, and they have sparo parts to fail back upon; but not so the precious human body—except perhaps a monkey gland, if you can afford it. The matter of nutrition in order to prevent disease is at last being treated seriously. It is scientific, thus provable. To those interested, the day is coming when we will welcome the information now being given to the world by men like Alexis Carroll, Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison, M.D., and Sir Arbuthnot Lane. "Eat what you like" instruction has had its day. The average citizen's likes are not to be relied upon. Give the body the wrong foods continually and eventual illness cannot be avoided,, with the added possibility of never again regaining that unusual condition, full, radiant health. Give the bodv good clean food and radiant health will" flow through that body far beyond the present-day standards of age limits. F.J.H.