EATING AND DISEASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5042, 20 October 1926, Page 3

EATING AND DISEASE.

NO HARD AND FAST DIETING BUi/E THE NORMAL TO BE AIMED AT. “A hard and fast rule cannot be? t made about dieting” remarked Dr. Hardwick-Smith during his Health Week address at Wellington last week. “All and sundry cannot take the same foods. a, small addition or a small subtraction will make all the difference between the right and wrong diet.” The speaker stated that there was a tendency to push a special article of food to .the front as the one and only “cure all” fo'r bodily ills. It would be insisted that th,at food should be the main staple diet, and that all other foods were only the garnishings to this main dish. One day it would be wholemeal, another green leaves, another orangeSi, and, to use perhaps an Irishism, at times no food at .all. . “But I want you to the normal,” he continued, "not to turn ourselves into faddists, .studying and weighing article of food. When one meal is over, thinking about the volume and vitamine value of the next.”

In referring to carbohydrates, which Include sugary and starchy foods, Dr. H ’.rdwick-Smith. said : “We are all apt to indulge too freely ip this clasp of food. Children can take a greater proportion than adults because they are actiive all through the day, ,and they need a great many calories of heat, whch are best supplied by starchy fopds and sugars. But when we are older, and particularly pacing on toward middle age, when exercise is restricted chiefly to barracking at football matches —we should take les ; carbohydrates. Thq body cannot use these foods, because it is not energetic, it stores them up in the form fat, put by for a rainy day, so to speak. But that rainy day dobs not come, and our poor bodies become cumbersome and our tissues fat and flabby. Our livers become sluggish a.nd our entire organs more prone to disease? The cup df tea with plenty of sugar to sweeten it and a plate of bread and’ butter is a curse. This curse is on many of our hard-worked womenfolk; whos.e husbands are away at work. They don’t bother to' cook a proper meal for themselves, but indulge iq this lifeless, constipating diet, which sa isfies their appetites but clogs the organispi and destroys the normal action Of the intestinal canal.

“Meats are our staple diet in New Zealand —I am afraid tool much so. They are the strongest and most, stimulating of our foods. They give the most energy to the body in proportion to the amount eaten. But ‘they are the most poisonous.—by that I mean they contain deleterious substances which have to be neutralised and dealt with by the way. Meats, therefore, should hot be taken unsparingly. Proteid foods are usually ap-' petising, because they stimulate the •gastric Juices to flow freely. The smell of a boiled pudding does not create a feeling of hunger as does of a grilled chop. The creation of a desire for food is a useful factor in digestion. A person with no appetite and a poor gastric secretion is as a rule lacking n a wish for food.”