CURE FOR COLDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 April 1939, Page 6

CURE FOR COLDS

A STARVATION DIET. TWELVE-YEAR EXPERIMENT. Details of an extraordinary starvation diet experiment that has been going on in a South African family for the past 12 years are given by Mr E. E. Buttner in the South African Medical Journal.

■ Every meal the family has eaten in that time has been weighed, regulated apd divided into calories and proteins. The aim generally has been to reduce the amount of food consumed. They take no tea, coffee, condiment or liquid of any kind save the milk and liquid in their scheduled diet. They don’t get colds and they have lost all inclination for tobacco or alcohol. Even severe perspiration fails to make them thirsty. Their health has improved out of all knowledge. Mr Buttner states that experts in the past have placed the daily calorie requirements for adults at the 2,500 mark and above. He considers from his experiment, however, that the daily requirements depend to a great extent on the nature of the diet and that there is a great difference between what the normal working adult consumes and what he actually requires to remain fit. He carried out a 12-year experiment [on a South African family in one of the large coastal tdwns. The family consisted of father, mother and three daughters. In order to simplify the daily preparation and weighing of the food, each person received the same quantities

which, however, were well below the accepted ideas as regards energy requirement. Thus the children never got too much though eating the same amount as their parents, whose daily intake was a starvation diet according to accepted standards. Mr Buttner says that before the experiment the health of all was below normal due to poor constitution and physique, except the mother. All were subject to coughs and colds. One daughter got annual bouts. of asthma, while the father usually got attacks of colds, coughs and hayfever two or three times a year. The first portion of the experiment lasted four years, during which time .each member of the family subsisted on 1,650 calories and 24 grams of protein a day. Immediately their health improved. They- became immune to colds. The asthma left the one girl and the father was nonplussed at the com-: plete disappearance of his attacks of colds and hayfever. In the two following four-year periods the diet was changed- slightly with the same results. Even the knockkneed gait of one of the girls has disappeared. “Since the experiment all inclination for tobacco and alcoholic drink, has undergone considerable change and today these things are distinctly nauseating and obnoxious to them. Theii’ outlook on life has undergone a considerable change for the better.” Mr Buttner says that his experiment should suffice to indicate that the accepted ideas of the energy requirements of human beings require serious investigation.