THE SLIMMING CRAZE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20932, 11 January 1938, Page 8

THE SLIMMING CRAZE

The modern craze for slimming is a great deal more harmful than the tight-lacing of our grandmothers, according to the “British Medical Journal.” In a leading article, the current "8.M.J.” states: “Liberal make-up will not successfully hide a fiaggard, drawn expression nor an irritable disposition. However, the sex which for so many years injured its health by tight-lacing is not likely to be deterred from slimming by such considerations.” ' A medcal officer of health told our London representative that he did not find any ill-effects from slimming among the young working-class women attending the maternity and child welfare clinics. “I think you will generally find that among the poorer classes of the community the girls give up slimming when they marry,” he said. “They go in for slimming while they are at the factory and while they are finding a husband. But once they have got their man they cease to worry very much about their figures.” An authority on diet at the London School of Economics, Mrs E. Watts, said that the danger was not so much slimming in itself as that so many young women did it indiscriminately, arranging their own diets without any expert guidance. Very often they cut 01T foods which were vitally necessary. A slimming diet, added Mrs Watts, should always include one pint of skimmed milk, one ounce of butter, some wholemeal bread and cereal, raw salads, cooked vegetables, raw or cooked fruit, or both, some meat or fish, and possibly some skimmed milk cheese.

Foods which should be cut out of a slimming diet were refined cereals, sugar, all fat other than butter and cheese, and all puddings and pastry.