Diet Schedules

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 522, 3 August 1932, Page 6

Diet Schedules

Health Talks,

By a Family Doctor.

J HAVE BEEN ASKED to recommend diets for a rheumatic person inclined to bbesity. I reply as follows: For* Gout and Rheumatism .—Allowed: All fresh vegetables freely (with exceptions named) ; fish (with exceptions named); meats (those of the lighter and whiter kinds), in great moderation; fresh ripe fruits (with exceptions named); vegetable soups; toast or stale bread, potatoes, salads, tomatoes; milk, skimmed, diluted -with soda water; tea, freshly infused and not strong; coffee. In small quantities only; Bread, plain biscuits, spinach, asparagus, haricot beans, broad beans, peas and lentils; meat soups; eggs, whisky, brandy, unsweetened gin, claret or hock, freely diluted. Forbidden ; Fats and rich foods, re-cooked foods, sauces, rich gravies, and made dishes; the harder or richer meats, l>eef, pork, or veal, smoked, dried or pickled fish, pork, or other meat; cheese, pastry; sugar, meat essences and strong soups; rhubarb, gooseberries, currants, lemons; salmon, herring, eel, lobster, crab; duck, goose, hare; mushrooms, truffles, pickles and spices; preserved fruits; ale, porter, stout, port (usually), champagne (nearly always), Burgundy, sherry, Madeira, and all liqueurs. For Obesity.—Allowed: Clear soups in small quantity only; broths, not thickened or containing such ingredients as rice or barley; fish, and lean meat (with exceptions named below) I eggs, fruit, green vegetables; stale bread, toast, rusks, and biscuits in great moderation, or gluten and almond bread or biscuits; butter; water (hot or cold); milk (skimmed), diluted with soda; tea or coffee; natural mineral waters; claret, hock, chablir, whisky or brandy, in moderation. Forbidden: Thick soups; eels, salmon, herrings, sardines with oil; pork, duck, goose; rice, tapioca, macaroni, oatmeal, sago, arrowroot; potatoes, peas, broad beans, parsnips, carrots, beetroot; pastry and sweets, sugar, starchy cocoas; cream and milk, except in great moderation; ale, porter, stout, port, champagne and liqueurs. General Directions: 1. An active life, with full occupation, short hours of sleep, and the most vigorous exercise compatible with the physical condition. Cycling, horse exercise, and fencing are especially valuable, but the form and amount of exercise must be carefully adapted to eacn case. 2. Free action of the bowels and skin, with regular Turkish I>aths. 3. The entire quantity of liquid taken, of all kinds, should be moderate.

It is no good going out to look for work when you are dead. I can assure you the fatal day was not the one when you took to your , bed for the last time. The really fatal day was when you foolishly went to work with a fever on you. You felt bad, but you took a dose of gin on the advice of your neighbour, who used to carry the bottles round for a chemist when he was a boy and therefore knows all about medicine, and now you are dead. If only you had gone to your doctor and said to him, “ Am I fit for work?” all your troubles would have ended. The doctor would have had a fit when he* took your temperature; recovering from the fit he would have ordered you to bed, you would have been tucked up in the warm blankets, Dame Nature would have said, “ That’s the stuff to give me,” or words to that effect, and you would have been alive to-day and earning money for the wife and family. You have not sense enough to know whether you are fit for work; the doctor knows because that is his job. And one word more. The sick person never does the right thing. If the' husband is ill, the wife must send for the doctor on her own; if the wife is ill, the husband must call in the man of medicine. We are a contrary race.

Nature will often see you through your troubles *f you will give her a chance. Go to business in the rain when you ought to be in bed, and Dame Nature will throw up the sponge. It is a grave decision to make when you are called on to make up your mind W’hether you are fit for work. Not once, but a hundred times I have been called out this year to see men in a perilous condition all because they went to work when, they were unfit. I know what, you are going to say. You are paid to do the work, not t > be sick. If 3-ou stay away, there* are plenty of others ready to take your job. You must earn the money for the wife and family. Now listen to me when you have quite finished. Y’ou must earn the money for the wife and family. That is just what I say. You cannot earn it if you are dead. Your value in the labour market is “ nil ” when you are in your wooden box. No employer wants a corpse.