DIET IS SECRET OF LONG LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18012, 24 November 1926, Page 4

DIET IS SECRET OF LONG LIFE.

RELATIONS BETWEEN FOOD AND HEALTH. In recCnt years unsuspected and sur prising relations between food and health have become apparent. So much is this the case that now few people with knowledge would deny that health and longevity depend on the dietary. Certain diseases have been shown to be due to the absence oi definite constituents from the diet. Chief amongst these deficiency diseases. as they are called, are infantile scurvy, rickets, wasting of the bones, eye troubles, retarded growth, and disorders of the nerves. But more important even than these specific effects is the vast amount of vague ill-health and debility which undoubtedly pre dispose the body to infection by the organisms of tuberculosis and other diseases. Exact nutrition studies have shown, that the diet of animals which onlv slightly deviates from the normal, has the most profound effect upon their youthfulness and span of life. Animals on such dietaries grow only at two-thirds the normal rate to an adult size well below the average. They remain stunted and never exhibit the sleek appearance of the healthy animal. They bear no litters, and the span of life is shortened to one-quarter of its full term. From these experimental findings, it is evident that tt.e animal tends to hurry through its life-cycle, each phase of which is shortened. With the contraction of the life-cycle disappear Vitality and youthlulnebs, and old age succeeds with its characteristic low resistance to infections and its nervous irritability. Human experience with faulty dietaries is strikingly similar and is clearly shown by an interesting study of town and country families around Coventry. It was found that in two generations the adult grandchildren ot the town dwellers numbered only half those of : the country people. Consequently, the townsfolk are continually being recruited from the county, since the tendency of the former is to die out. What is the explanation? It is to be found in the character of the food. Food, always cheaper in the country, is also of greater variety and freshness lhan in the town, where the community is all too dependent on the grocery store. The modern grocer carries a stock consisting chiefly of cereal grains which have been devitalised in manufacture, polished lice, legumes, tinned meats and fish, preserved fruits, sugar and tea. It is very difficult to make up an adequate dietary where such foods predominate. To maintain health and vigour we should make as much use of tne *' protective foods ” —as they are called in America—as possible. They comprise the products of the dairy, the garden and the land. The most important foods of these three categories are respectively: Clean milk, butter, cream, cheese and eggs, vegetables to be eaten raw, such as lettuce, celery, watercress, onions, radishes, tomatoes and cucumber; roots and tubers, such ab carrots and potatoes, the latter preferably baked in their skins. Such natural foods contain the nice balance of iooj constituents undisturbed because they have been spared the sins of the kitchen and the crimes of the factory. They contain the minerals and vitamins which Nature intended should be our safeguards of health, as well as that most valuable element, the fibre which supplies the roughage necessary for the complete elimination of the waste products. A dietary selected from these foods can be relied upon to preserve youthfulness, energy and efficiency as long as possible and to extend the average span of j*eara allowed to man.