NATIONALITY AND DIET.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 319, 19 December 1929, Page 2

NATIONALITY AND DIET.

According to Dr Fiessinger, who ' writes in the Paris Figaro, it is largely national diet which determines national temperament. Two influences, he says, have gone to the formation of the French temperament through the centuries—wine and women. Germany, on the other hand, regards its women simply as housekeepers and nursemaids, and consumes beer instead of wine, sausage and fat instead of meat. As for the English, they feed on “ romstecks ” and drink whisky. He goes on to say that the whole gamut of feeling—love, bate, ambition, anger, pain, frank duplicity —does not give out the same note on the keyboards of subjects so differently nourished. To what extent was the German ferocity in the late war not due to gross feeding and heavy drinking ? But the emigrants to America, he points out, assimilate at the same time the food and thought of their new country , jettisoning all tradition of idea and diet likely to impede them in a struggle in which they are determined to conquer. Dr Fiessinger conceives that the “ elites ” of all nations may, by the richness of their intellect, overcome any international variation in the richness of their diet. Yet, he pessimistically concludes, democracy never allows its best to govern, so that the world will continue as it does, barred for all time by alimentary differences from composing elementary differences.