The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. THE FASTERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 187, 6 February 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. THE FASTERS.

Since Succi and other professional starvers deliberately fought the human instinct to take food when hunger called and made money as freaks, very many persons have come to regard the satisfaction of the natural appetite for food aa an evil. Additional interest is given to the local campaign against breakfast by Mr. Lloyd Jones, of Wanganui, by the daily reports from America regarding the Hazzard trial, in which a woman is charged with "curing" a patient to death by starving her. The chief points of Mr. Jones' contention seem to be that the food does not supply the strength of the human body, and that the less one eats the stronger one becomes. It would be quite as easy to prove that in order to see more clearly at night the electric light should be turned out, and that the way to make a bagful of sand heavier is to empty most of it on the ground. If food is not the fuel that drives the human engine, the sun is not the element that creates all heat. Mr. Jones is a "no breakfast" advocate. The majority of people take breakfast and find it grateful, comforting and necessary. The digestive apparatus which has been partially resting during the hours of sleep is invigorated for the fray. The normal man is hungry. His instinct tells him to feed. The new-born infant's first instinct is for food. He wants his first breakfast. Don't give it to liim, and the world will be brighter and better and filled with people as healthy as Mr. Jones! Mr. Jones told us that the army of Xerxes was victorious on one meal a day. Any army has its meals when it can get them. Mr. Jones was not with Mr. Xerxes at the time, and one has some reason for the belief that the reporters with Mr. Xerxes' army were not dependable. At any rate, they did not say how long the one meal a day lasted. On off days the soldiers probably started their meal early and kept going till sundown. It is a way hungry men, both civilised and savage, have. Savages often have to starve for days because they can't get food. When the food is available they have no "'no breakfast" fads at all. We will admit many people eat too much and drink too much, and we will also mention that the doctrine «f starvation is only preachable to people

who don't have to starve and who have plenty of "tucker" in the larder. Mr. Jones, when he is next in London, might exhort the people on the Thames Embankment not to have breakfast. They , would be able to obey his behest without trouble. If sleep and not food is the true strength fuel, Taranaki farmers might start at once cutting down their hay and corn bills. It is wrong to allow a horse to eat when he is hungry if it is wrong to permit a human being to take food when he wants it. The "no breakfast" idea for plough-horses would make the horses so strong that they would tear up the ground like steam scarifiers! , In connection with the dairy industry, may we point out that-the nefarious habit calves have got into of taking breakfast with the full consent and cognisance of. their mothers is . a weakening and debasing habit? The Creator, had not consulted Mr. Jones when he fitted calves and foala and human beings with the instinct to take food on waging. .Apparently in order to acquire perfect and robust health it is merely necessary to go without food and to be optimistic. Optimism i 3 a matter of red corpuscles and effective circulation. 'lt is impossible to have effective normal circulation in an underfed Dosy. Mr. Jones contends that' food-does Hot supply strength, but uses it up. "The less food a man ate, the more strength he reserved for himself." This is logic standing on its head with its feet in the air. Keep on pouring water into a sound vessel and you empty it all the time; the faster you run the slower you will go; the higher you climb the nearer the ground you will get; and so on! The necessity for going without a meal is proof positive that the "patient" has been an intemperate eater. To push the idea doWn the throats of temperate eaters that they should go without food because some people over-eat themselves is preposterous. Mr. Jones shall take ten navvies of equal strength and capacity. He shall "no breakfast" five, and he shall let the others satisfy the appetites Berved 'out to them at their birth. He shall give the whole ten the exact amount of food for the second and third meals—and he shall demonstrate if he can that the no-breakfasters" are more contented, are stronger, shovel more mullock and . sleep more heartily—for 'in sleep alone lie 4 strength. In case any New Plymouth people should be contemplating .giving up the pernicious habit of eating, we would advise them first to try the starvation" idea as a promoter of strength on their draught horses, their cart horses, their working bullocks, their ipilking cows, their cattle dogs—and their infants, who go nuzzling around for a feed in the way God taught them and whose mothers had not discovered until Mr. Jones told them how sinful a thing it is .'to eat. At any rate, Mr. Jones is amiising, but we hope that his campaign' against food won't seriously affect the I instincts of the animal kingdom. Thousands of New. Zealanders will this morning .attempt suicide by eating beefsteak, not knowing ho# utterly abandoned thev are. •