HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1942, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

FRANKNESS SOMETIMES HELPS. DISCIPLINE IN DIET. (By the Health Department.) The average New Zealander doesn't know how to eat. This indictment comes from a competent outside observer, and it does not refer to oui table manners. It refers to the kind of food we eat. Indeed, if our knowledge of what to eat and how to eat it were as good as our table behaviour, we would definitely be the fit and healthy people we think we are. This is one of the unpalatable home truths that are sometimes fired at us from outside, and whether we get indignant about it or not, it is supported by that frank and revealing little volume of cold and indisputable facts—the New Zealand Year Book. The observer says we dont eat right. The Year Book backs him up. For instance, we're told we eat too much meat. We are the biggest meat eaters in the world. Round-about 12 oz. per head per day is the average (the little book says so), and all we need is about 4 ounces The people with their chops for breakfast, roast for dinner, and cold meat for tea are to blame. They bump the average up. This meat complex in our dietary means that fewer eggs, less milk and cheese are being eaten. Actually we drink an average of just over a half a pint of milk per head per day. The desirable ration is from one pint a day for adults to 1? pints for children and nursing and expectant mothers. We eat too much pastry and _ too many cakes. The afternoon tea ritual is grossly overdone. Most of the milk adults get is contained in the copious quantities of tea that they drink. These are some of the reasons that lead to the prevalence of dental disease, digestive troubles, rhumatism and neuritis in this country.

Try a little diet discipline. Cut down on meat, sugar, confectionery, pastry and tea; build up your ration of milk, eggs, fish, fruit, cheese, fresh vegetables and wholemeal bread.