HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1943, Page 5

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

; FADDINESS WITH FOOD. ! NEED FOR CAUTION. 1 (By the Health Department). 1 People are apt to draw wrong conclusions from something they only partly understand. A frequent mis- ' take made by parents is to assume that ’ because a child's asthma, for instance, is made worse by milk, then asthma in another child is also caused by milk. 1 Thus much free, but uninformed, ad- ■ vice is passed around. The cause may be—and probably is—totally different in the two children. It is a matter for medical examination. This acute sensitiveness to certain foods is known as food allergy, and it is encountered more frequently in children than in adults. Often it is interpreted as faddiness, but it is a definite complaint, and it must be humoured. The constituent of the food towards which the sensitiveness exists is some protein element. Thus, when children are sensitive to milk, it is the lactalbumin that is responsible, and the trouble can often be overcome by boiling the milk or using dried or condensed milk. Again, in eggs it is an albumin in the white of the egg. Weilcooked eggs are less likely to produce it than underdone or raw eggs. Egg yolk, on the other hand, is usually safe for babies. Sometimes the food causes no disturbance when eaten, but when inhaled may give rise to trouble. For instance, rice powder, often used in cosmetics, may produce nasal troubles; and wheat flour inhaled by bakers may cause symptoms—though the same baker can, with' impunity, eat bread made from the same batch of flour. The commonest foodstuffs may produce allergy-—milk, eggs, wheat, oatmeal, peas, beans, oranges, chocolates, nuts, potatoes, apples, strawberries, lobsters, oysters, pork, linseed, and so on. Don’t dismiss food faddiness lightly; there may be a deeper reason for it.