OUR STUPID DIET

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7103, 5 September 1949, Page 4

OUR STUPID DIET

CONDEMNATION OF OVEREATING HABIT CRITICISM BY FORMER DENTAL SERVICE HEAD “I don’t object to children having sweets or cake, but they should have them at mealtime”, said Sir Thomas Hunter, former head of the New Zealand Dental Service, in criticising what he termed “our stupid diet”, and diet habits, during an address at a graduation ceremony at the State Dental Clinic recently. One of the habits Sir Thomas condemned was that of over-eating. “People to-day are living to eat instead of eating to live”, he said. Gone was the practice of three meals a day. Instead it was five, six or seven, it provided no rest for the digestive system, and, as far as dental hygiene was concerned the mouth could not be kept clean. Sin Thomas stressed the importance and necessity of the work of the school dental service. Referring to the care of the teeth of two-year-olds, he said that some of the most important ingredients in food were being wasted. In bread for instance, the most important properties were milled out in the production of the white loaf and given to the pigs and hens. “It seems to me that the young people of the country are more important”, he observed. Sugar and rice are two products similarly treated.

On the question of diet, Sir Thomas felt that the school dental service should also devise a scheme to overcome the necessity for dental treatment of school children, and in this respect he urged the nurses who graduated to get hold of the parents and discuss the question of their children’s diets. All too frequently children were to be seen in buses and on streets sucking ice creams and eating chocolates, an in-between-meal practice he* condemned as being cruel and unfair to the child. If the nurses advised parents in this respect it would have a beneficial effect on the health of children.

parents were not stupid, and if the nurses pressed home to them the value of a proper diet, it must have its effect in time, said Sir Thomas. New Zealand had many advantages, but there was more dental and other disease and the people required more hospital beds than most countries. He felt, however, that the dental service was doing more than anyone else to prevent disease, and he hoped that through the efforts of the service, New Zealand would become the healthiest country in the world: It was a big thing to aim at, and he was certain that the nurses would work for that end.