Two Opinions on Diet

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 74, 22 November 1940, Page 5

Two Opinions on Diet

S for what one should eat in this age of parsley and plenty, your choice is as good as mine. But I shall provide two opinions in which I generally concur. First the advice of William Waldorf Astor,’ first Viscount Astor, to his grandson aged twelves "Drink plenty of wine from childhood on, spend a

week with a barrel of oysters and a turkey, drink a bottle of champagne for luncheon, smoke all you want. My other rule for a long life is to kill my doctor." And for those with a distaste for champagne and turkey, or an allergy where oysters are concerned, here is a _ metrical dietary compiled by Professor Cathcart, of the University of

Urlasgow: Eat all kind nature doth bestow: It will amalgamate below. If the mind says so, it shall be so. But, if you once begin to doubt, The gastric juice will find it out. This seems pretty good advice, provided you do not do all of your eating of Nature’s rich provender at once. The important thing, to my mind, is to accept the proposition that eating and drinking are important parts of life, and to realise that they require plenty of study and application. There seems to be a tendency nowadays to pretend that we should not think about food and- drink, but actually there is nothing we should think more about, and more constantly. I'll prove it. Human beings, on a nice calculation, eat for about an hour every day. This, in an average life of sixty years, works out at no less than 21,600 hours, which figure, more vulgarly reduced, makes 912 days and nights, or two and a-half full years of existence devoted exclusively to this activity. (John Moffett, "Eating and Drinking," 4Y A, November 5).