The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER. 30, 1926. DIET AND CANCER

Southland Times, Issue 20014, 30 October 1926, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER. 30, 1926. DIET AND CANCER

. After making every allowance for the good earnest people who go to extremes in their efforts to save the race by making the individuals eschew most of the food they enjoy, the evidence is in support of the contention that most men and women eat too well and unwisely. The incidence of cancer has directed attention to the influence of diet, since the ravages of the disease are most intense in the richest nations. It is a disease of civilisation and where modern civilisation is found in its highest form the disease takes its heaviest toll. The discoveries last year suggesting that the germ of the disease was to be isolated confirmed the theory that cancer flourishes where there is morbid tissue and those who blame our diet for its encouragement of cancer insist that faulty feeding provides the morbid tissue favourable to the disease. A fiery war has been waged on the subject, and probably the extremists on both sides are to be blamed for having obscured the realities of the subject by their vehemence and their readiness to credit opponents with ulterior motives, but when the president of the American College of Surgeons enters the lists with an emphatic statement that over-eating and over-drink-ing were responsible for bringing about a condition in the human body favourable to cancer the subject is likely to receive even more attention than it has gained in the past. Dr. Walter Chapman’s -statement to the Congress of Surgeons in the United States drew attention to the fact that vegetarians do not escape cancer, and this may be hailed by the anti-vegetarians as a heavy body-blow for their antagonists, but actually Dr. Chapman has said something which will be welcomed by those students of dietwho declare that the evils of the modern menu are to be found not merely in the consumption of meat, but in the unwise use of food other than meat. These people attack the whole of the modem dietary, insisting that much damage is done by unwise combinations of non-meat dishes. Alcohol is attacked, but so also is tea, coffee, and even milk in many instances. The virtues of cooked food are discounted heavily and we find, also, that the use of highly-refined white flour is assailed. On these matters of detail there is heavy controversy, but -undoubtedly the effect of all this argument is to induce people to recognise that they must readjust their ideas of food values. The old ideas have been under suspicion for a long time, and to-day it is safe to say that the majority of the people are their own enemies, that they invite many of their ailments through giving less care to the food they eat than they give to the food given to animals under their care. The explanation of this extraordinary advantage given to the animals, is that men and women eat to satisfy their palates and not their nflfeds, and having more or less freedom in their choice of food they find it harder to accept a diet which requires the elimination of things they enjoy. The animal, having no say in its choice of food, has to eat what has been found to be beneficial, and is the better for it. Many prejudices have yet to be overcome, and they are strong because they are buttressed by a powerful predilection for tasty dishes. Those who would change our diet and put it on what they deem to be a rational basis, tell us that the home of the “good cook” is the place wh«e conditions are favourable to cancer and to other diseases that have developed among the civilised peoples. Boldly they declare that practically the whole of the diet in the majority of the homes is wrong, and that where beneficial food is eaten it is taken in damaging combinations. Their enthusiasm may carry them too far in these sweeping denunciations, but we cannot blink the fact that few people give any serious thought to the food they consume day after day, little thought to the real value of the food they take as fuel for sustaining life without doing injury to the delicate machinery of the human body. Latterly has been a general acceptance of the declaration that, terrible though the ravages of tuberculosis may be, the menace of cancer is far more serious and if, as it now appears to be beyond question, the misuse of food is the basis of this disease’s expansion, then our study of dietetics must be intensified and the people must be prepared to put their eating on a basis of bodily needs where now it is governed entirely by taste. The spread of cancer menaces the most highly-developed portion of the human race and if drastic changes of diet are generally accepted as an essential measure of defence against the disease the economic effects in the world will be farreaching. The people who live to eat, do not eat to live; they eat to die.