THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 1899. A QUESTION OF DIET.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3677, 1 March 1899, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES (PUBLISHED DAILY.)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 1899. A QUESTION OF DIET.

With .which is Iscobpoiutkd the Wkllishthi iNDEI’ENDJIKT, KSTAM.ISUUI) 18-10.

Dr Hodgson, of Sydney, has been creating considerable controversy, not only among the faculty of New South Wales but also among the general public, b; bis assertion that the Australians do nut eat enough meat. This assertion \ra made in a lecture the other day, and Dr Hodgson further asserted that neither fruits nor farinaceous foods formed r. satisfactory diet for either growingchildren or fully developed manhood “No harm accrued,” says Dr Hodgson, “ to the youngest children from a meat diet, but a great deal arose from a farinaceous and fruit diet. The teeth, by rapid decay, showed that fruit and sugar were offensive to child growth. Sugar did not provide the flesh of the body nor the bones of it. Meat, fulfilled

these requirements. . . Meat furnished the substance of tho body in an easily assimilable form.” But this ,r hot all. Dr Hodgson, in his lecti r; , declared that , he had watched the advent and increase of diabetes, and ho found it, he,says, “coincident with.thcraze for eating fruit, which contained this sugar in a large proportion. Meat, did not produce this disease, lint sugar, fruit and farinaceous foods'in excess certainly did.”

Then Dr Hodgson attempted to sappart his contentions by statistics. Hove, however, he failed. In 1890, the jo-.i dealt with by Dr Hodgson, there were 39 fatal cases of diabetes to 1027 deaths from consumption and 621 from caned'. D. has been a question with the medic.i' profession for some years win i an t the highly slim abating- effect of neat diet was not due to some extent the growth of consumption and cancer in the colonies. Those of the profession' who t have . entertained this theory have maintained that in the assimilation of meat the sys tern is more severely taxed than in the assimilation of fruit and farinaceous foods. As a consequence, in cases not only of chronic disease, but in rheuma tism, gout and skin diseases, a complete stoppage of meat diet lias been ordered by the profession. Were Dr Hodgson!* theory the true one, it would mean that in most cases of sickness the more meal eaten, the sooner well., However, Ie: Dr Hodgson and those who agree with him turn to the statistics and they wifi find that the Australian colonics are the largest consumers of meat on the face of the earth. There may be r considerable waste in the colonies thal may account to some extent for the apparent very high rate of consumption. Mr Coghlan, in the food statistics in his “Seven Colonies of Australasia for 1897-98,” says ;' “ The quantity of meat used by the Australian people is th* most remarkable feature of their diet. The consumption in Germany is 641bs and in Australia 2641bs per head of the population; while in America, which is a meat-exporting country, the consumption is a little more than half that of Australia.” In Groat Britain the consumption of meat has of recent years developed rapidly, until from 401bs per head per annum it has risen to 1181 b ;. Coincident with this increase in meat consumption has been the increase , in the number of deaths from phthisis and cancer. It is not the province of the newspaper writer to dogmatism about these matters ; it is, however, his duty to draw public attention to them. Still we are strongly inclined to the opinion,, notwithstanding the dictum of Dr Hodgson, of Sydney, that too much meat is eaten by the people in the colonies. A more eminent authority than Dr^Hodgson is Dr Milner Fotheigill, of London, and-ho has written pertinently upon this very topic. “The Englishman who will,” he says, “ persist in an animal dietary, and especially ‘ the roast beef of old England,’ in warm and tropical climates sooner or later falls ill with some hepatic (liver) trouble, because his liver cannot deal effectually or successfully with the nitrogenous food which he consumes far in excess of his body, wants.” ' Following on the same lines, Professor Gilman Thompson, of New York, writes : —“There is a constant tendency to eat too much meat, and when its effects are not counterbalanced by free out-door exercise, it produces an excess of waste matter, which accumulates and causes biliousness, gout and other troubles.” Then, again, Sir Henry Thompson affirms that “ Englishmen- consume too much animal food, particularly the flesh of cattle. For all who are occupied with severe and continuous mechanical labour a mixed diet, of which cereals and legumes form a large portion, and fish, a little fat meat, bacon or lard, eggs and milk, form a moderate but constant proportion, is more nutritious and wholesome than almost entirely animal food. For those whose ; labour is chiefly mental, and whose muscular exercise.-is inconsiderable, still less of concentrated nitrogenous food is desirable.” But let doctors differ. For ourselves we agree that errors.in diet are far. more, common in excessive meat-eating than in abstention. The consumption of fruits, farinaceous foods and leguminous vegetables may be to some extent neglected ; and it may be shown that the greater part of the world’s population lives on grains and fruits; yet for the average man and woman living in temperate

climates the mv'-wt diet, say, of one part animal food and. .three-parts vegetable, will be found in most circumstances to he the best.