HUNGER—FRIEND AND FOE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18017, 4 November 1920, Page 2

HUNGER—FRIEND AND FOE

By WALTER M. GALLICHAN. There are millions of persons in the civilised nations who have never experienced the true pangs of hunger. They feel discomfort from an involuntary fast of a few hours, but this is very different from a constant, gnawing sensation of want. A slight, dull ache in the epigastrium is the nearest approach to a ravenous hunger endured by the majority of peop!e. The sense of hunger may be said to arise from an itching of the stomach. This unpleasant feeling is the source of human activity, and the spur to man’s exercise of the intelligent faculties. Domestic animals fed and tended by man lose some of their primitive cunning and ingenuity in obtaining food. A tame duck has a smaller brain than a wild duck. A lapdog has almost lost his ancestral hunting instinct. Of mankind it may be said, “No hunger, no exertion.” Whenever food comes easily to the table there is a slackening of effort to secure food. But the menace of hunger .stimulates industry. It is, however, equally true that a perpetual sense of hunger paralyses activity. Underfed human beings are a burden upon the We pay as a community for the diseases, the inefficiency, the mental defectiveness, and the crime resulting from hungriness. ’ The feeding of hungry school-child-ren is a public recognition of the fact that the hunger of a proportion of the community has peril for the whole. Constant hunger is demoralising to the individual aud reacts upon the society in which he lives. Anaemia costs the country a big annual expenditure. The poverty of blood favours poverty in effort and the output of labour and dulls the intelligence. An imperfect sense of hunger is also the cause of illness and inefficiency. Many thousands of town dwellers and sedentary people rarely experience a really healthy and insistent hunger. For this reason the food of civilised men, and especially among the prosperous, must be flavoured and made tempting to feeble and fastidious appetites. The sedentary hard worker often takes an aperitif, or appetiser, before he begins a meal, and he craves for condiments and sauces to make his meals tasty. YVithout these aids to appetite and pleasure in eating, many persons cannot enjoy food.

The strenuous town life Induces that condition when a man says he is “too tired to eat." The remedy for this abnormal loss of hunger is physical exercise in the open air. No one can neglect muscular activity with impunity. Every townsman should play out of doors for at least one day in the week. Excessive hunger and the absence of hunger are both detrimental to health and capacity. There is also the pathological hunger of the glutton, which results from habit and over-stimulation and is really spurious “appetite.” The chief rule of health is the encouragement and maintenance of a good appetite and a sound digestion.