FOOD for HEALTH

Te Ao Hou, Summer 1953, Page 48

FOOD for HEALTH The health of a nation depends to no small extent on the foods its people eat, and the traditional foods of the Maori played an important part in building a strong and healthy race. Unfortunately, few of these foods are available today, and so they have had to be almost entirely replaced by pakeha foods. It is obviously important that the foods now eaten should be as good as the old Maori foods, but this is not always the case. White bread, sugar and biscuits are poor substitutes for such foods as eel flesh, puha and kumera. A survey of Maori diets published in 1945 stated that ‘too little milk, cheese, eggs, fruit and vegetables, and whole cereals’ were eaten. All these are ‘protective foods’, so called because they help to protect the body against disease; and, with meat and fish, these are the only pakeha foods which can take the place of the true Maori foods. They are essential for the health of the adult, and they are very, very important foods for growing children.