FOOD FADS AND FOLLIES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 8945, 20 December 1907, Page 2

FOOD FADS AND FOLLIES.

"All the fashionable food fads and follies of the hour are iv the nature of deprivation," Sir James CrichtonBrowne, M. D., observed recently in his presidential address to the Sanitary Inspectors' Association at Llandudno. "At one time the tendency was to 'stuff,' and every new kind of nutriment was hailed as a boon to humanity. Now the pendulum lias swung to the opposite extreme. Aldermen are like laths, citizens train down for athletic sports, only duodecimo portions are served at dinner; even light wine is looked at askance,whilst 'split' soda waters are in vogue. On all hands the cry is that we eat too much. So fierce in some quarters is the propaganda of dietetic asceticism tJfflQ. in dread of being suspected of g_attony, we can only indulge a healthy appetite in secret 7' One common class of food fads and follies was directed to a specific object—getting thin. Women, to "look lady-like," must be tall, slim, and fragile; and middle-aged men were risking prematurely the "shrunk shanks" of Pantaloon. In one town lemons were largely consumed by the factory girls— some girls eating five or six a day, often rind and all —in the hope of emaciating and etiolating themselves. The debility thus produced was responsible for indulgence in alcohol and narcotics. "Liquor sweets" were beiug largely consumed. They contain, in a sugar or cocoa casing, drops of rum, gin, or liqueurs. They create a taste, and when taken in sufficient quautity—one very poor girl confessed to spending eigliteenpence a week on them—may in the young aud susceptible produce the initial stages of intoxication. There seemed reason to fear also that the surreptitious consumption of drugs was making way among us. He had information of an extensive trade in lozenges which contained a drug which must be cious if taken habitually or iv exceSg. They were largely consumed, he believed, for their intoxicating properties. They were called 'linseed, liquorice, and chloride' lozenges, and were swallowed in large quantities by women, who found they could obtain the obfuscation they desired, and by errand boys and shop-girls, and even by school children, dulling the brain and injuring the memory.