Men Bold Enough To Talk About Cooking

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19130, 26 September 1936, Page 10

Men Bold Enough To Talk About Cooking

CI.R John Ovr, Director of the Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, gave the (iOOO delegates to the annual general meeting of Ihe National Federation of Women's Institutes in Britain some advice on nutrition which is worthy of consideration by all who manage homes. He said:—

"You read a lot about proteins, vitamins and minerals, but don't bother too much about these tiresome technical terms. Leave these to the scientists working in their laboratories. Everything that, is of practical importance so far as the homes are, concerned can be staled in tonus of common foodstuffs.

"And don't bother about fixed diets. There is no need to eat, according to schedule. There is a danger of being too .scientific and too fussy and faddy about foods. All that is needed for health is found in common foodstuffs, and hundreds of different diets can be made up, all equally good, provided they contain sufficient amounts of these. If this is done, people should eat according (o their taste. There is a great, deal of truth in the saying thai, 'A little ot what you fancy does you a lot ol good.' " Talk About Calories.

.In Manchester on July 25, Dr. Veitch Clark, medical officer of health, faced an audience composed largely of women when he opened a '' Food for Health" exhibition and was bold enough to talk about cooking.

He disclaimed any skill its a cook, but said he understood the principles underlying the art. The value of toast, for example, as compared with bread, was that by the application of heal the starch content was in part converted into sugar—a process normally performed by digestion. Toasiiug, therefore, was really preparing food before it was eaten.

Dr. Clark laid down three principles of dietetics; no diet is good unless it is properly balanced; scientific values should be expressed in terms of the food that can be bought in shops—"talk about calories means nothing to the layman"; cooking should be good. Diet Centuries Ago. Dr. Liudsey W. Ball en, of Lyndhurst road, N.W., writing in the Lancet, says:—

"On what did the Greek thinkers, the Roman soldiers, and the barbarians who at length overcame them live? "W'hai was the diet of those Norsemen of Iceland who sailed to America anil habitually harried the coasts of Ireland and south-west England? "Manifestly they outclassed us in endurance, but it scarcely seems likely that their diet was, by modern standards, 'correct.'

"Did not those fomidable Mongols who, under Genghis Khan, conquered half Ihe world live exclusively on horse flesh and marc's milk? ..."

"I am not suggesting that all these people were doing something physiologically impossible, far from it; but 1 do suggest that their great deeds and thoughts make ii hard to believe thai we have now, suddenly and for the first time, discovered what a man ought to eat."