WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 24, 8 December 1939, Page 43

WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

Dear Friends, This is a funny old world, isn’t it? Or, maybe, it is we poor mortals who are funny. Sometimes we have our values, like Alice in Wonderland, turned upside down — while most of us are dissatisfied with what we've got and insist on crying for the moon. Take the matter of weight (avoirdupois). The thin ones of the world usually pine to be round and chubby — while the fat ones yearn for a sylphlike slenderness. In the old days weight was taken more or less for granted. If one got fat, well, one got fat, and that was the end of it. Anyway, the old-fashioned whalebone corset must have helped to subjugate any superfluous pounds. But with women’s physical emancipation went those hideous armours, and no twist of fashion will ever impose them on us again. Of course, we had to pay something for our newwon freedom. Women’s briefer dressing, her wider, freer, sporting life — all made for physical development. Till one day someone whispered the word — Fat, and immediately women all over the world became weight conscious. Now when women become actively conscious about anything, they never deal in half-measures. Almost with the realisation of Fat came another word-Diet. Oh, Diet! How much sacrifice, how much endurance and suffering has been perpetuated in your name. Long, breadless days — hours shorn of butter and pastries and cream. The sigh of the tortured passes round the world. From China to Alaska — from England to Ecuador. Everywhere women began to diet. It became the rage. Enterprising Dietitians flooded the market with new and hideous forms of self-abnegation. The Eighteen Day Diet, the Hay Diet — a hundred others, all with the common objective of keeping the unwanted pounds in check. Restaurants joined forces and advertised these special diets on their menus. In the seclusion of their homes, women slimmed and starved and endured — while their tempers and their husbands suffered. Diets flourished through the Press, all in bewildering contradiction. One would tell you to shun potatoes as you would the devil, while others quoted them as the mainstay of their dietetic sheet. Poor frail woman floundered among it all, It became the survival of the fittest. Only the strong-souled could endure. The weaker sisters fell by the roadside. However, let it be said thankfully, the craze wore itself out. Women still diet to-day, but with an eye blessedly set to proportion. The Eighteen Day Diet and the Hay Diet with their multiple sisters have lost their former glamour. Women have learnt to eat sensibly, and to keep their unwanted pounds in check by a sane, balanced diet of fruit, meat, vegetables, and cereals. "A. final word about potatoes. So many women deny themselves this wholesome vegetable for fear it will add to their weight. The old saying about a potato — "In your mouth a few minutes, in your stomach a few hours, on your hips for the rest of your life,’ no longer holds any terrors. Marcovici, a world-famous expert, has the most recent word. He declares definitely that potatoes are not fattening and can be taken on the most rigid diet — provided sweets, pastries, and the like are avoided. Meanwhile, two lemons squeezed into a glass and drunk first thing in: the morning, if they do not certainly reduce your weight, will make you feel lighter and fresher. A doctor once told me that if people realised the medicinal value of lemons they would pay guineas for them instead of pence! Yours Cordially,

Cynthiya