DIET IN OLD AGE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 401, 28 February 1947, Page 25

DIET IN OLD AGE

»sir,-Dr. Muriel Bell’s art.cle in The Listener for January 13-19 enlightened me on the previously puzzling subject of issuing extra butter to old people. I still cannot understand why they are not issued extra sugar. The butter, it appears, was just kindness to those who had been through the battle of life and were now entitled to live in Easy Street. I should rather put it "giving them a square deal" in the matter. But it might be a good idea to let people know that after the last war the diseases of degeneration were found to be much reduced in those countries which were fat-starved. An_ elderly woman told me, when I mentioned that I had surrendered all my meat coupons and butter coupons (I have been gett.ng fish and unrationed meat, though, and I find that I am better without fat), "well they do say that at our age it’s the things we don’t get that do us the most good!" I understand that sugar facilitates the loss of lime from the body and that this is the way it affects the teeth of the (continued on next page)

LETTERS (Cont'd) (continued from previous page)

young. It might be well to prohibit the use of sugar to any whose bodies are still growing, and perhaps to expectant mothers, I am very much inclined to think that for the same reason it might be very helpful to those who are getting up in the forties and afterwards. For myself, I find that I tire very quickly without sugar and revive just as quickly when I take it. If any research work has been done on this subject I have not heard of it. We all hope to have a long, healthy and comfortable old age, and the sooner we set out to find the way to attain this the sooner there will be fewer poor old wrecks dumped into those places in mockery called "Homes."

JOHN ADAM

NASON

(Dunedin),