TALK ABOUT FOOD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19946, 2 November 1934, Page 12

TALK ABOUT FOOD

SOME “FACTS AND FANCIES ”

FADDISTS DENOUNCED Professor H. Priestly, in an address to members of the Sydney Housewives’ Progressive Association recently, combatterd a number of generally accepted theories about food values, and denounced food faddists, who, he said, often did untold harm. “There are more faddists and so-called specialists talking and writing about diet than anything else,” he said. The professor spoke on “Food Facts and Fancies.” “Vitamins are fashionable just now,” he said. “Important as they are, however, too much has been made of them. I have been with vitamins since the word ‘go.’ In fact, I worked in a room next to that of the man who invented them. Extensive vitamin concentrates are not necessary as food when a well-mixed diet is taken. Vitamin D can be replaced almost wholly by exposure to sunlight. It is unnecessary to buy something in a tin. It is better to buy some decent food.”

Sugar, said Professor Priestly, was the most readily available source of energy. The eating of sugar during prolonged physical effort was sound practice. Glucose had no special advantage over cane sugar. Boiled lollies were good for children. If a man’s diet was devoid of common salt he would die of starvation, he said. There was no evidence that the eating of large quantities of salt did any harm. No Hard and Fast Rule

It was impossible to make a hard and fast rule about diet. Professor Priestly continued. Everybody was a law to himself. Market price was no evidence of food value. The breakfast cereal was no better than the grain from which it was made —usually not as good. A wheat breakfast food had about the same food value as bread, and was no more digestible. The cheaper cuts of meat were just as nutritious as the more expensice cuts. An egg was a good piece of food, but not worth the price sometimes paid for it. In food value, one egg equalled 1-loz. of fat meat, and 14 oysters (a poor form of food) equalled one egg. The food value of mushrooms was extremely low. Brains were a poor item of food. The much despised tripe, on the other hand, was a very valuable and easily digested food. A plate of clear soup had less food value than a glass of lemonade, and thick soup was not much better. But it was an excellent stimulus to digestion provided something to digest followed it. Fish was an excellent source of animal protein, but it was no better than red meat. The belief that white meats were more digestible and less damaging to the kidneys than red meats was dying hard. Chicken was no easier to digest than beefsteak. There was no evidence that fish formed a brain food. Unless one ate bones and all, fish contained no more phosphorus than red meat. It was cheaper to buy fillets of fish than the whole fish. “I eat brown bread always, and wholmeal if I can get it, but that is because I like the taste of it and not because it is any better than white bread,” said Professor Priestly “There are many fancy breads on the market, but they are not worth the money.” Soya beans, he added, had the biggest protein content of any food, but peanuts were almost as good—raw or roasted. Milk was the most valuable single item of food taken by man. In bread and milk, a man had everything he wanted. Milk was indispensable to the growing child, and not nearly enough was taken. Skimmed milk was a most valuable food. Green vegetables and fruit had very little body-building or energy-giving value, but they supplied vitamins, mineral salts, and cellulose —the cellulose acting as “roughage.” Water was just as essential a food as any other. Two or three pints a day should be drunk. More than 99 per cent of a cup of tea was water. For a person with a normal stomach there were no disadvantages, and many advantages in drinking with meals, said Professor Priestly. Digestion was more rapid and complete when liquid was taken in small quantities throughout a meal.