THE IDEAL OF SLIMNESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20292, 28 December 1927, Page 10

THE IDEAL OF SLIMNESS.

UNATTAINABLE BY EATING TOAST. FOND ILLUSION SHATTERED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 11. For years past people who are stout have eaten toast in preference to bread believing that it is less fattening, and that by its use superfluous tlesh would presently disappear Slim people who desired to keep a fashionable silhouette have eaten toast with the idea that . would prevent them joining the ranks ot the bulky. But toasted bread as a remedy has been deprived of the lofty position by a man of science, who is publicly supported by at least one wellknown medical authority, Professor R. H. A. Plimmei (chair of chemistry, University of London), in a lecture on “ Common Errors of Diet, denounced ns quite wrong the proverb that something was as full of meat as an egg, because the egg had only half as much protein as meat. It was a to believe that toast was less fattening than bread. What happened was that two pieces of toast were eaten instead of one stodgy piece of bread, and the toast was a much more concentrated rood. The belie, that water was fattening was quite erroneous, and the way to become thin was to cut down sugar, f our, and meat, and eat watery foods such as fruit Doctors claimed marvellous cures for reducing fat by cutting oft water but all that happened was that the individual became more concentrated like toast, and loss spongy, like bread. ADEQUATE DAY’S DIET.

Herring was better value than cod, and cheese than meat. In all public dinners and in hotels the mistake was made ot using protein as a body fuel. In a pronerly-balanced diet one-sixth should be protein, one-sixth fat, and four-sixths carbohydrate, but rich people unduly increased the protein and the fat, and cut down the carbohydrate. An adequate day’s diet would be half-pint milk, one o"g 4oz of meat or fish, 2oz of cheese, Boz’ of bread, lOoz of potatoes, Boz of cereals, and 2oz of sugar. No one food, he said, was a complete food, except milk for infants. Nearly every one of the national foods has been tampered with. Tinned fruit has not the value of fresh fruit. Highly milled grain has not the value of natural gram, and milk and epizs arc not as they should be if the animals producing them have been improperly fed. , FATNESS AND FOUL FOOD.

Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, who has given special study to the subject of dietetics, agrees with Professor Plimmer that the belief that toast is an aid to slimness is a fallacy. “ It is an actual fact—there can be no argument about it —that toast is just as fattening as bread. When bread is toasted onlv the water in it disappears. That toast is an aid to slimness is an old fallacy, and one very difficult to destroy. People who are fat will not get thin by eating toast; that is certain. The best thing they can do is to diet —and take plenty of proper exercise. Fatness is generally the result of foul blood. Fat is deposited- in those parts of the body which are not moved sufficiently." Sir Arbuthnot Lane insisted that not until fat people got their blood into a healthy condition by means of wise dieting and exercise would they attain their ideal of slimness.