FOOD FADDISM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20283, 16 December 1927, Page 9

FOOD FADDISM.

Sir James Crichton Browne, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Certificated Grocers in London, uttered a warning against food faddists. 1 ‘ Beyond butter and eggs there is scarcely any commodity in which you deal that is not from time to time made the subject of suspicion and vituperation by the hypochondriacs who pour forth their digestive troubles in the newspapers, and the presumptuous wiseacres who know nothing about the subject are always telling us what to eat, drink, and avoid. I would like to quote an historical instance of the mischief that faddism may do. Lord Byron, under the fear of becoming fat, on the advice of some quack so dieted himself as to induce melancholy and debility, from which h e died. A thin slice of bread with a cup of tea at breakfast, a light vegetable dinner with a bottle of seltzer water tinged with vin de Grave, and in the evening a cup of green tea without milk or sugar formed his whole sustenance The pangs of hunger he appeased by chewing tobacco. He died at 36. No wonder! Had he taken his food like a man he might have lived for many years to enrich our literature with treasures even more precious than “ Childe | Harold.”