DIET AND HEALTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22325, 27 July 1934, Page 17

DIET AND HEALTH

ADDRESS BY MR RONALD M'LEAN An interesting lecture on dietetics, entitled “ The Value of Correct Food,” was given before a small audience in the Y.M.C.A. assembly hall last evening by Mr Ronald M'Lean, of Wellington. Miss I. Devereux occupied the chair and briefly introduced the speaker. Mr M'Lean said that his experience in the field of dietetics had proved that cures could be achieved by the application of correct diet, which built up the body, and strengthened the resistance, thereby allowing Nature to overcome the trouble, lie had met in Wellington recently a descendant of Fletcher Christian, the leader of the Bounty mutineers, and had been told by the young man that on Pitcairn Island, where the principal diet of the inhabitants was vegetables and greens, operations were unknown, and that people died only as the result of accidents or through old age. In those days one could scarcely contemplate a civilised town without a hospital attached, and when the speaker had been told by an acquaintance that Auckland had probably the finest and best-equipped hospital in the Dominion, he had replied that conditions which compelled about one-quarter of the population of Auckland to pass through that institution in the course of a year were nothing to be proud of in this enlightened age. Mr M'Lean went on to deal with the normal functions of the body, and showed that favoured by proper conditions, the human organism was a highly efficient and long-wearing machine, but that the modern haphazard system of diet, which included much food that was so refined and prepared that most of the good was extracted before its consumption, was the root cause of the majority of the ills the flesh suffered. They heard more about vocational guidance, the depression and its cause, and other topics these days than the question of preserving good health, and many of # the treatments for various ailments merely dealt with the effect and not the cause of those ills. Mr M'Lean explained the cause of rheumatism, an extremely general complaint these days, which could be traced back to wrong food, or good food spoilt by faulty combinations. The speaker also touched on the subject of obesity, one of the major tragedies of modern life, and said that his advice to fat people was to “eat themselves thin. Fat persons were too fond of fatty meat, large quantities of sugar, and other types of food that built up adipose tissue, and the best method they could adopt for the removal of the superfluous flesh was to eat sanely and sparingly of foods which would help the body to throw off the coating of fat. Three “ Dont s ” which could be obeyed by corpulent people with advantage werei —“Dont sleep too much. Don't over-eat. Dont take a taxi- " Mr M'Lean made a special plea for a study of children’s diet, and pointed out that many children were barred from enjoying their heritage of health and good spirits as the result of their parents’ failure to supply them with properly

nourishing food. Such cases in New Zo land were unpardonable, as good, fresh, wholesome food, such as milk, honey, butter, and other commodities were so easily obtainable. At the conclusion of his lecture Mr M‘Lean answered a number of question on the subject of diet, and was accorded * hearty vote of thanks.