HEALTH NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21600, 22 March 1932, Page 13

HEALTH NOTES

Written for the Otago Daily Times, By R. J. Terry.

From time to time I receive letters from my readers. Possibly, I would be correct in saying that a small percentage of the letters comes from diet extremists or food cranks. 1 hope that the readers of this column will look on diet from the common-sense point of view and not become faddists. It has to be remembered that the health literature from any country with a population such as that of the United States of America, with over 100.000. people, has to keep up the interest of its subscribers, many of whom muse in the natural order of things be extremists. We occasionally read the literature or extracts from it, -assimilate that fragment of knowledge or pass Jt on to a friend, and, as is often the case, a little knowledge is dangerous. It may be that a person gets the idea that he is lacking iron. The idea in time may become an obsession and he would probably s consume pounds of iron in a year if he could get it. As a fact, iron is absolutely essential for our well-being, but we only utilise each day minute quantities. The quantities are so small as to be beyond the ordinary lay mind. For instance, I weigh about I2st 81b stripped, and the amount of iron in the whole of my body would not be more than is contained in a four-inch nail. But, if that iron fell to less than is contained in a three-inch nail, I would most certainly lose reserve force and general well-being. On the other hand, if I were to consume more iron than was required to make good the daily waste of the fourinch nail, the excess would only be a waste inclined to cause constipation, and if I continued to take excess iron might even bring about what is known as iron poisoning. The quantities eliminated from the body daily are very minute, as are the quantities absorbed from food. Some people are under the impression that, a food quoted rich in iron, such as a raisin, contains about a tenth of its bulk of iron, whereas raisins vary in their iron content from 40 to 70 per cent, or parte of 1.000. parts, and that is all that is necessary for our well-being. So with vitamins. Minute quantities are sufficient. lam convinced that excess might bring about results which are not beneficial, although I will freely admit that in these modern times, when we cat what are termed civilised foods, excess of vitamin is very rare. Amateur health advisers are apt very knowingly to quote vitamins. My candid opinion is that vitamins are simply another name for what might be termed the life principal of foods. Twentyfive years ago I, together with others, knew three of the vitamins under other names. We knew there was something contained in the juices of plants which meant virility and freedom from disease when fed to animal and human, which, m health, enabled the plant to reproduce itself or to flower and form seeds. From time to time claims are made from various parts of the world that various vitamins have been isolated. ' Recently it has been claimed, and I hope with success. that vitamin A has been isolated from the juice of carrots. , I may say that the same substance which colours a carrot —and I claim it is the life principal—would give colour to the yolk of an egg, to butter-fat, would intensify the yellowness or redness of a grain of maize. Proof seems to be given that this vitamin A is the essential life giver, for it has also been acclaimed that a sticky yellowish fluid has been obtained from the liver of a fish which is nine-tenths pure vitamin A. Germany claims that she has isolated vitamin D. Years ago we obtained minute crystalline substances which I suppose to-day would be classified as vitamin. If I remember correctly, The name we gave them then was Erbos. Ine name is not of much importance; it is the results that will tend to make a happier humanity, and that should, be our goal. There are laboratories in Washington, D.C., controlled by experts, but they have never seen one of the strange food elements they study. None could describe exactly what one was like, yet in their research, rooms vitamins have been studied, catalogued, traced to particular food, and their astonishing effects discovered and charted. How has this been d °Rats are chiefly used in the study of the effects of vitamins and food values generally. As one can have three or four generations of rats in the yf ar > “}? e . ~s of food can be seen, not only, in the individual rat, but also in its progeny and its progeny’s progeny. . , Great care has to be exercised in the selection of the animals for experimental work. Before a rat is used in an up-to-date laboratory the scientist wants to know exactly what its grandparents and great-grandparents were like. Do we. when diagnosing the condition of the human being, seek any knowledge as regards the environment under which the parents or grandparents lived. When new animals are supplied to the laboratory two generations are allowed to live and die before the rats, are used for experimental purposes. This is don ®, stabilise the animals and to be sure that they are normal and have not inherited peculiarities that may upset the results of the, delicate tests to which they will be subjected. , . , . In such laboratories the mam work is discovering the presence or absence ot a given vitamin in a given food. In recent years research in the work of invisible vitamins has gone ahead at a rapid rate. The list of these mysterious elements is expanding all the time. We now know of vitamin A, which is found particularly in home-made or fanners’ butter, in eggs, liver, and spinach, and produces growth and also tends to prevent blindness. It is found in smaller quantities in numerous other foods, but these are, the main sources of supply of foods available here in New Zealand. Vitamin B is abundant in pens, tomatoes, and asparagus, preventin" what is known as Beri-Beri. or, in other words, counteracting an excessive starchy diet. Vitamin C, preventing scurvy, is found particularly in lemons, lettuce, and carrots. Vitamin D. the antirickets vitamin, is abundant in cod liver oil. Vitamin E is found in ' leafy vegetables and grains, promoting fertility, and the last vitamin of which we have knowledge is vitamin G, discovered especially in eggs, milk, and yeast, and preventing certain forms of nerve trouble. All the vitamins are contained in foods easily procurable here in the Dominion, and Nature has put them in the proportions which she considers correct. So why worry unduly?