HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 17 October 1942, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

A PLEASANT TONIC ! (By the Health Department) There is such a thing as a pleasant tonic—palatable to take, and remarkably beneficial in its effect. Take an apple. People are inclined to regard the apple j as a nice titbit, to be taken ! casually, or when one feels like it. But it has a definite medical value and if people could get tlie apple habit, they would save j themselves from the unpleasantj ness and expense of less tasty concoctions. Packed inside the glowing skin of a ripe apple is a mass of living tissue—for the apple does not die when picked, but goes on storing up vitamins during the process of ripening. Admittedly, 82 per cent of it is water, but it also contains small amounts of sugar and carbon compounds and organic salts. These salts are important. They not only contain small proportions of body-build-ing elements such as phosphorous, iron, lime and potash, but also help in two ways towards good health. They act as a gentle stimulus to kidney action, and they appear in the blood as alkaline carbonates that benefit the body cells—for the ability of tlie blood to carry carbon dioxide depends on the degree of alkalinity in the serum. If this alkalinity is reduced below a fixed point, a very distressing and dangerous condition known as acidosis results. In addition to its nutritive and laxative value, and its supply of vitamin C. the apple has another very important virtue—the delicate ethers which give it its attractive taste. To be properly enjoyed, these require that the apple should be eaten skin and all. as the best flavour is just below the skin. And the roughage from the skin is of real internal value. (C ut this out: You mav need it.) ENCOURAGED TO MARRY JAPANESE New York. Sept. 15. A Cuban diplomatist recently returned from Manila describes a peculiar Japanese way of pressing their Asia for the Asiatics programme. They charge Filipinos 500 pesos for licenses to marry Filipinos, but only two pesos if they marry Japanese women.