HAY DIET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23107, 5 February 1937, Page 11

HAY DIET

FACT AND FANCY RHYTHM OF DIGESTIVE TRACT (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON. Jan. 13. The medical editor of New Health has penned an article called “Hay Diet Fallacies.” It can be read in the January issue. From this article appended are extracts;— “Dr Hay’s system is based on the assumption that the human digestive arrangements are unsuited to deal with those combinations of foodstuffs to which mankind has turned for centuries past in order to provide it with an interesting meal. We are now told that to take our proteins and carbohydrates together at the same meal is an insult to our digestions, and that therefore we should forgo such wellestablished combinations as bread and cheese, bread or potatoes and meat, bread and butter and the breakfast egg, the innocent, seeming milk pudding after the meat, or the convenient picnic ham sandwich. “ So revolutionary a theory is difficult of acceptance in the light of practical . experience. If it were true we should all be dyspeptics. On the other hand, physiologists have been led to believe that the order and rhythms of the secretory and motor mechanisms of the digestive tract are so arranged that the various constituents of the meal are dealt with item by item independently of the presence of other constituents of the meal. Thus it is the acid chyme (partially digested stomach contents) which, as they leave 'the stomach, stimulates the secretion of the juices in the next part of the tract where carbohydrates are dealt with. Dr Hay would have it that the acidity of the stomach contents set up in taking meat inhibits the digestion of starch, the principal digestion of which takes place in the small gut. It is difficult to accept his theory on physiological grounds. WHERE IT MAY BE HELPFUL “ The proof of the puddinv—or, rather, in this instance, of no pudding —is in the results, say his disciples. Now, on general grounds, the diet recommended by Dr Hay is a very sound one, and no doubt it effects a very salutary influence on those who have habitually consumed too much carbohydrate, too little green stuff and fruit, and w'ho have eaten to excess when highly palatable mixtures of foodstuffs have so encouraged. Such people lose excessive weight on the diet, their digestions improve, and they feel, as they rejoice to tell the unbeliever. ‘marvellous.’ It would seem that the cult is far more popular among the female population and in those circles where the good things of the table are more accessible. “ Probably the best that can be fairly said for this system is that no harm can come to anyone who cares to take the trouble —and it certainly does involve a good deal of picking and choosing—to follow Dr Hay’s precepts, and it may be found helpful in certain cases.”