AGAINST SALT

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 14 November 1912, Page 7

AGAINST SALT

The last health wari.>.; -appears m the November "London." There is a widespread belief that common salt is a requisite in diet —tfuvt we cannot bo well fed unless a lair quantity is eaten with our food. Now we are to consider that- the instinctive craving for salt is one ol the 1 units in present-day civilisation. The "crude mineral sodium chloride-, which, has come to be univorsaly adopted as an adjunct to diet," only satisfies the taste, while it iails entirely to fulfil all the good uses which the eater vaguely ascribes t-o it. "It is a law of Nature that man can only assimilate the mineral salts -.liter they have gone through the process of vegetable growth and become living substances. The raw minerals have no life that can communicate it-self directly to him." Therotore, men should b8 content with the vitalised salts consuvhed in fruits, vegetables, and in the flesh of grass-fceding animals, without further sprinkling the so foods iiitii st-u/f that rem a in.-s "a foreign sul-.stn.neo i'i the body." displaying aU the o'-otoxjouw qualities usually attributed to fi-o.ig-ner.s. The overs-lit- diet has, of course, long been convinced of evil, and vegetarians have now and again united in .saltcellar in the condemnation dealt out to the moat-dish. "T he-Heve the time is not far distant," vnv>ie Mrs C. ,W. Kar'e. in- 1902. "v.hen is ?)?>•;.• be- discovered that the <;reat 'cause of cancer is meat and sa.lt. as leprosy is supposed to originate in eating salt fish in large quantities." But, then, do the vegetariins cook their vegetables with oat searomng. and <l°ny themselves a da.sh of salt with their potatoes? If not they, t>o, ccrne under this new P-- c.f rheumatic and nervous affection- due t') their unfortunate habir of,suit eating. In the case adduced to illustrate the theory, only "the abstainer from salt had no ailment whatever." Why grass-eating ■animals themselves should know the hunger for common sji.lt i.s a point not touched upon in this article; but the London Kssayist and his friends not only agree with Hotspur's popinjay, "that it was a great pity, so it was, that villain salt (petre.) should be digged out of the bowels of the harmless earth," but oven resent the appearance of the most refined domestic variety. Porridge without ";'!r. bread without salt, unsalted butter, must make for them indeed .1 viioirl and sapless world!