FOOD FADDISTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4910, 2 December 1925, Page 1

FOOD FADDISTS.

A WELL-BALANCED DIETARY.

OBSERVATIONS BY A PHYSICIAN.

Food faddists, like the poor, are always with us, and one of their most vigorous sects, iis vegetarianism (states “A Well-known Physician” in the “Sunday Times”). The advocates of this, system have split up into tactions, one delighting in nuts, and fruits because they groiw far from the contaminating soil. Another shudders at the thought of eating the flesh of slain animals, believing that it coarsens moral fibre, besides being directly detrimental to health. The third is sufficiently broadminded to permit the use of eggs, milk products, honey, etc., in addition to vegetable foods. It has been established beyond question that a strict vegetarian d,iet can adequately nourish the body,- but to do so requires’ moi’e than average knowledge. With right combinations and judicious selection, in a few instances, unusual physique and stamina has been acquired, as. for instance Nurmi, the wonder runner, but for the average person a vegetable diet is markedly improved by the addition of even small ■ quantities of meat.

That Nature intended us to be omnivorous is shown by our anatomical structure, but m/iny civilised people, including ourselves, eat- relatively -far too much meat. It must be remembered that we almost exclusively use the .“muscle cuts,” while carnivorous animals devour liver, kidneys, brain, bones, and all, by wh[ch means they secure the accessory food factors, or vitamines, without which health, even life, is impossible. With us, harmful effects are due not so much to excessive meat a& ,to failure to make the diet complete, since we derive the greater part of the remainder of bur food supply from devitalised and overrefined flour, and tubers with much of “the goodness” boiled out. Such diets are deficient in many respects, and it is only by supplementing them with plenty of fruit and leafy vegetables that protection can be gained. Meat contains its own condiments, called extractives, which excite the stomach to ample secretion of gastric juice. Any additional whipping up by the use of mustard and peppery is obviously unnecessary. Beef tea and meat extracts of various brands are little else than solutions of extractives in w'ater, quite good stimulants, but dif no nutritive value whatever. As all, our body processes are slowed down by heat, it is wise to eat considerably less meat in summer than in cold weather.

With plain, wholesome meals, well -cooked, attractively served, and? eaten with the sauce of appe.tjte, nobody should go far wrong, especially if the old saw about rising from the table hungry is intelligently observed.