FOOD FADDISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22964, 20 August 1936, Page 20

FOOD FADDISM

WOMEN MORE ADDICTED THEIR DIET HAS CHANGED (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, July 25. Men are not so addicted to food faddism as women. Such was the opinion expressed by Dr R. M. B. Mackenna, honorary dermatologist at the Liverpool Stanley Hospital, during a sitting of the British Medical Association at Oxford this week. He was referring to common errors of diet which contribute to skin diseases. "We still enjoy our bacon and egg breakfast, the light luncheon in the middle of the day, and the heavy meal, with its preponderance of proteins, at night, and on this not too wellbalanced regimen we manage to keep fairly fit. But so far as the upper middle classes are concerned the diet of the women is changing—or has changed. No longer does the woman of the house have the same breakfast as her husband. Half a grape fruit or some orange jujce, some thin, dry toast or rye bread, and a cup of tea or coffee suffice for her needs. For lunch she appears to enjoy lettuce, cheese and biscuits, or some similar fare. Afternoon tea is now but a shadow of its former self, but at dinner she keeps pace with her husband. The result is that after one meal her stomach has to cope with approximately 60 or 70 per cent, of her daily nutriment." Dr Mackenna added that he had seen at least a dozen cases of trouble attributable to this unbalanced ingestion of food, all of which had readily yielded to treatment when the patient learned that it was better to spread her food over three meals a day rather than to consume at one sitting the major part of her sustenance.

NINE FOODS NECESSARY TO LIFE Speaking of the inauguration of the section of nutrition, Sir Robert M'Carrison, formerly of the Indian Medical Service, said that although nutrition was last among the sections it would soon become important. "With the rapid increase in knowledge it became more and more apparent that the science of nutrition was the foundation of a more rational medicine." What, Sir Robert asked, were the materials wherewith the function of nutrition was effected and whence were they derived? The foodstuffs which, when properly combined in the diet, were known to ensure perfect nutrition and a high grade of physical efficiency and health in human beings, were:—(l) A good whole cereal grain or mixture of whole cereal grains or a gopd wholemeal bread; (2) milk and the products of milk —butter, cheese, curds, buttermilk; (3) egg: (4) green leaf vegetables; (5) root vegetables—potatoes, carrots, etc.; (6) legumes; (7) fruit; (8) meat; (9) water. That these provided all elements and complexes, known and unknown, needed for normal nutrition was evident from the fact that they were the ingredients of the national diets of certain races of Northern India whose physique and health, when they made use of their national diets in their entirely, were unsurpassed by any other races of mankind. Most of these foodstuffs were nowadays classed as " protective foods"—a discovery made centuries ago by the races referred to, and of which the newer knowledge of nutrition had revealed the importance. If food was the foundation of health, these foodstuffs were its foundation stones. Using them aright, there was little need to concern oneself too closely with the precise amounts of this or that chemical ingredient. These foodstuffs provided all and in due amount and proportion one to another. There was, however, this proviso: that they must be produced on soils which were not themselves depleted of essential plant nutrients or of substances, such as iodine, needed for the normal nutrition of man and animals and conveyed to them by plants.