OUR BABIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1938, Page 11

OUR BABIES

(By “Hygeia.”) (Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. — Plunket Society.) “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” WHAT FOOD SHOULD WE EAT AND WHY? It is a somewhat strange fact that, with all the experience of the individual and of the race upon which we draw, many people know neither from experience nor instinct what is the best diet at the different stages and different circumstances of their lives to ensure sound health. Unsuitable feeding and over-feeding (whether due to quantity or quality of food) are both very common, and produce their characteristic ill-results. Broadly speaking, the simpler and the plainer the food the better. In the selection of food, bear in mind the following chief points: — (1) A sufficient supply of body-build-ing foods and proteins. Proteins include all kinds of lean meats, milk, cheese, fish and eggs. Other foods, such as flour and bread, also constitute protein, as do the pulse foods and nuts of all kinds.

(2) A daily supply of vegetable food. In addition to potato some other vegetable, and preferably a green one, such as lettuce, cabbage, spinach and silver beet, should be supplied daily. Some kind of salad or fruit is desirable. (3) Not less than half a pint of milk daily. Butter should be given at one meal at least. Milk is a very valuable article of diet, owing to the different kinds of food substances it contains. Milk furnishes us with proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and, in addition, mineral salts and vitamins, and has been described as a “many-sided” food.

In the “Foundations of Nutrition,” by Rose', we read, “Milk owes its importance in the diet to the fine quality of its proteins; to the completeness of its assortment of mineral elements, and the excellent proportions in which they occur; to the high content of lime, which makes milk' almost indispensable for ideal storage of this element during, growth; to the liberal amounts of vitamins A and B, which make a pint and a half a day a practical guarantee against deficiency of either; and to the presence of vitamin D in association with such a proportion of phosphorus to lime as is most favourable for the calcification of bones and teeth. Regularly used in liberal quantities, it is the best possible foundation for children's diet." Above all, food must be provided in the form of a mixed and varied dietary from which the body is to draw for the supply of its particular needs. The advocacy of any special article of diet may be misleading, and even fallacious, if this fact is not kept in mind. On the other hand, dietaries should neither be too ample nor too varied, "for in a multitude of meals there shall be disease.” In the well-balanced diet there is no lack of mineral salts or vitamins. MINERAL SALTS—THEIR SOURCE AND WORK. The following extract is taken from “Food and Health,” by R. H. A. Plimmer. D.Sc., London, and Violet G. Plimmer: "Salts: By this term is generally understood table salt or the daily dose of aperient salts. Chemicaly speaking, both these are salts, but the term has another meaning, and includes the mineral material in food. Salts are the ash which remain on burning food or coal. They are the unburnable part of the fuel. The ash of the coal fire is just so much waste material, but the ash of oui- food contains mineral salts which are essential for life. They dissolve in the fluids of our body, and play a vital part in regulating the work of different organs. If certain of these salts are absent from the food the heart will cease to beat. The red colour of the blood cannot be formed without iron salts, noi' the secretion of the thyroid gland without salts containing iodine. Lime salts and phosphates are required for the hardening of bones and teeth. All these mineral salts will be provided if the diet is well mixed, that is. contains a variety of foodstuffs. The heating, tinning, bottling

or ageing of foodstuffs does not harm the salts, but they are removed from our food by the milling of grain to make our white flour and rice. A diet consisting of the white cereal foods will not provide all the necessary mineral salts. We must not, however, confuse the salts with the vitamins, although the mineral salts are usually present in the same part of the animal or plant, and can be removed together as in the milling of grain—hence the confusion. Vitamins are destroyed by processes which leave the mineral salts unharmed.

The heating, ageing or drying of foods has a harmful effect on some vitamins, and they are destroyed by certain chemicals (such as the cooking of green vegetables with soda). These processes do not affect the vegetable salts, which can be preserved in tinned or bottled food for years.