HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Putaruru Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1236, 26 June 1947, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

i A WELL-BALANCED DIET (By the Department of Health) There is a tendency to dub anyone who tslks about diet a faddist. There are plenty who talk and write about it, too, and plague themselves and their friends with their own brand of diet. They go into minute details and lay great emphasis on this or that, backing it up with recipes and much dogmatism. Because of all this spate of semi-scientific knowledge the Department of Health has deemed it advisable to record and publish a guide to a well-balanced diet- This guide is built up from agreed-upon world nutrition knowledge. It begins with milk. Each day grown-ups should have one pint or more. A pre-school child requires a pint and a half. School children, adolescents, expectant and nursing mothers need a pint and threequarters. Meat is definitely advised because of its body-building capacity. Beginning with one ounce in the second year, you work up to four ounces for the sedentary worker, more for the heavy worker. Substitute liver or kidney, and fish, each once a week if possible. -Eggs are good for us, one a day being best, when you can get them. When unavailable use peas, beans and lentils, or take more milk, cheese, meat or fish. Cheese is excellent food. Begin early with the children at IS months, and get the whole family into the habit of having cheese daily, grated, sliced or as cooked dishes. Potatoes always once a day, sometimes twice; at least two other vegetables, one green always, and preferably a yellow vegetable: if the latter be unobtainable, another green or root or other vegetable. Fruits are difficult nowadays; go for tomatoes, grapefruit, oranges, -apples, bananas •and other fruits as available.

Of butter, one ounce a day is enough. Of bread and cereals take what your appetite requires, and after the second year of life wholemeal bread is preferred. At least half your bread should be wholemeal. Give the children a teaspoon of cod liver oil, and two teaspoons for expectant and nursing mothers, and babies- You should use only iodised salt, but if you won’t, take two teaspoons of sea meal per day instead.