Home

Texts

Typos — p. 3: tonsilitis [= tonsillitis]


A review of the dietetic recommendations of the Final Report of the Mixed Committee of the League of Nations on the Relation of Nutrition to Health, Agriculture and Economic Policy

by
Anthony M. Ludovici

The Quarterly Gazette of the English Array 2, 1937, pp. 3–4


- p. 3 -
This Report, published in August, 1937 (pp. 322, price 7/6), in its purely dietetic recommendations adds little to the knowledge already in possession of the members of the Array. In the time-honoured way it divides the constituents of human diet into "energy-producers" (i.e. fuel) and "protective foods" (i.e. those substances which maintain the wholeness of the organism — vitamins, mineral salts and "good" protein), and emphatically confirms what we have long known, that to feel and look adequately nourished does not by any means imply that one is adequately protected. Thus a man of any social class who imagines he is well fed, and whom his relatives and friends regard as a hearty eater, may daily leave his house for his bread-winning occupation in a condition which, for the lack of a better term, may be described as "unarmed," without his being in the least aware of his vulnerable condition. That is to say, he may quite ignorantly be in the same defenceless state physiologically as an infantryman would be from the military standpoint, if his C.O. sent him out to fight the enemy without his rifle.
        This defencelessness may be just as often due to the lack of one vitamin or of one mineral salt, as of several. (Incidentally, it is interesting to note that, in this Report, the compilers have not thought fit to venture beyond Vitamin D in their enumeration of the protective accessory elements, so that public authorities depending on this document alone for guidance would remain ignorant of the other accessory foodstuffs essential for health.)
        As the Report points out, it is not necessarily the spectacular deficiency diseases, such as scurvy, pellagra, beri-beri, rickets, osteomalacia, which assail the so-called "well-fed" man, and dramatically reveal the gravity of his condition, but the harassing, distressing and quite unnecessary tendency of being unable to resist such a harmless infection as the common cold, or being unable to survive a winter without an attack of influenza, bronchitis, eczema, rheumatism, sciatica, or a spring without an attack of boils, tonsilitis or earache.
        Thus, after enumerating the major and more obvious consequences of a diet either improperly balanced or deficient in "protective" constituents, the compilers of the Report say: "The nutritional diseases mentioned above are, except in the case of rickets, the outcome of long-continued severe deprivation of the vitamins in question. It is perhaps more important to emphasize, however, that a less severe deprivation in time or extent or a partially inadequate intake of these essentials may involve ill-defined and disabling departures from health of which the causes may remain undiagnosed" (p. 63). They might have added with perfect justice that these "ill-defined and disabling departures from health" are also frequently falsely diagnosed as affections due to some organism or bacillus — a diagnosis which the victim believes to be true and eagerly accepts, because it relieves him of the irksome task of making such fundamental changes in his regime as would constitute him henceforward a properly "armed" citizen, although they might exasperate his wife and completely disorganize the kitchen.
        An important point made by the compilers of the Report in regard to the relation of an adequate and fully protective diet to income is that, contrary to the "sob-stuff" constantly purveyed by Socialists and Communists to the effect that the inadequately remunerated must perforce be ill-nourished, there is no such necessary connexion between low wages and inadequate diet, but that the latter is far more often due to ignorance than to poverty. Thus they say (p. 249): "It should not be thought, however, because the protective foods tend to be expensive sources of calories, that they are expensive feeds. On the contrary . . . they are relatively cheap as sources of minerals and vitamins."
        What does this mean precisely? It means that a man may, for instance, obtain adequate nourishment and supplies of Vitamins A, C and G and of iron and protein by eating calf's liver and potatoes; but that he can attain more protein, much more iron and more Vitamin A and C, and quite adequate amounts of B and G by eating a much cheaper meal of spinach, potatoes and cheese, or spinach with bread and cheese. Or again, a man who insists on adequate supplies of Vitamin D during an English winter may leave the country and live at an expensive hotel in Algiers or Las Palmas. But a poor man can obtain quite adequate supplies of Vitamin D for at least four months of winter by staying at home and taking half a teaspoonful every day of cod liver oil from a one shilling 8oz. bottle of this product; while he may also get his Vitamin A more cheaply from carrots than from cream. Nor is the more expensive way always the healthier. For instance, it is more wholesome to eat carrots or spinach as a source of Vitamin A than sirloin fat.
        Hence, as the Report implies, it is education rather than wealth which secures a sound health-preserving bill-of-fare, and, basing their conclusions on an investigation carried out in Czechoslovakia, the compilers found (p. 287) that "the cost of the recommended diet was calculated to be about the same as that of the original." In other words, by a skilful manipulation of the available funds and of the food purchases, and without increasing the gross amount of either, a sound diet could be substituted for the rejected unsound diet.
        Naturally this has its limits; for there are obviously cases — though they are fewer in Europe than many suppose — when the family budget is so small that no amount of substitution and adjustment could make the diet adequate. But the fact long insisted on by the present writer, that in matters of diet education would go a long way towards raising millions from the level of the ill-nourished to that of the adequately nourished, without adding a cent to their incomes, is abundantly demonstrated by the findings of this Report; as is also the fact that, where economies are attempted by people on small incomes, whether in order to live in a more handsome villa, to buy a wireless set, to run a small car, or to visit the local cinema, it is on the purchase of essentials like food that the retrenchment is made. Thus, in Stockton-on-Tees, it was found "that workers' families which were transferred from slum dwellings to a modern housing estate suffered seriously in health as compared with those who remained in the slums, owing to the necessity for paying a larger proportion of their incomes for rent, and in consequence not having enough available for an adequate diet" (p. 242). But in cases where this extra outlay is not actually imposed upon people by the lethal benevolence of their unimaginative superiors, and where the extra outlay is a burden voluntarily undertaken, education in sound realistic values alone can correct the modern tendency to sacrifice essentials for non-essentials.
        The Report also emphasises the desirability of a larger consumption of fish by the populations of Europe and even of England. In this matter it is not only a question of securing better and easier digestion, and cheaper sources of the important proteins and vitamins, but also of reviving a huge and once flourishing industry, of relieving the nation of its huge imports of first-class protein foods — such as meat, and incidentally of providing the poorer elements in the population with a natural and adequate source of iodine. The fact that Japan — to mention

- p. 4 -
only one argument in support of this medical aspect of the case — is free from goitre, and that "this is due to its high consumption of foods of marine origin" (p. 68), is evidence of the desirability of this reform. But it is to be feared that many foolish and deep-seated prejudices will have to be overcome, particularly among the poor, before any such change can be realised, and the superstition now prevalent among the working classes that fish is only a relish, because it is, after all, only fast-day food, will have to be systematically eradicated.
        Dwelling on the appalling condition of the so-called "toddler" in London (i.e., the child who, having been weaned from a complete and full diet — milk, has for a year or more been adapted by ignoramuses to an adult diet), the compilers of the Report reveal an alarming state of affairs, pointing to all the unsuspected and titanic evils of both the industrialisation and the commercialisation of women, which have broken down the wise tradition of ages, so that the modern mother at the time of weaning is as helpless as if her ancestors had never once been faced with the problem confronting her. "In a recent enquiry (1930) in London schools it was revealed that, among children of five years of age, there were from 67 per cent. to 88 per cent. of cases of abnormalities of the bones, 67 per cent. to 82 per cent. of cases of adenoids, enlarged septic tonsils, and other disorders of the pharynx, and 88 per cent. to 93 per cent. having badly formed or decayed teeth" (pp. 72–73). The compilers of the Report leave us in no doubt that these conditions might "have been avoided by the inclusion in their [the infants'] diet of large quantities of protective foods."
        Nowadays the evil influences often start long before the weaning stage has been reached, owing to the comparatively recent sharp decline in breast-feeding, which again is the inevitable result of Industrialism and Feminism. "The mortality rate among the artificially-fed infants is 56 times greater than that among those completely breast-fed" and, according to a recent investigation, "whereas only 4 out of 91,749 of the breast-fed infants died of respiratory infections, 82 out of the 1707 artificially-fed infants died from this cause" (p. 69). This is only one aspect of the evil, but it is significant.
        In regard to recent changes that have come over adult diet, particularly in England, the compilers of the Report notice the spectacular increase in sugar consumption during the last century, which they state is fivefold, while the consumption of potatoes and bread has suffered a corresponding and regrettable decline; and they pointed out that "an excessive proportion of sugar in the diet is especially bad for children, whose instinct to eat it seems out of all proportion to its nutritional qualities, since it occupies the place which should be filled by protective foods" (p. 93). The use of the word "instinct" in this connexion is obviously loose. One might as well speak of the drunkard's "instinct" to over-indulge in liquor. A morbid craving, no matter how created, cannot be likened to an instinct, which whenever it operates serves the highest purposes of the species.
        The regrettable increase in the consumption of sugar and white flour is sufficiently condemned by the compilers when they call attention to the fact that "the introduction of sugar and white flour to populations in remote districts has been followed by the occurrence of dental disease previously unknown. Examples are found among the inhabitants of Iceland, among Esquimo and native Indian tribes, in Alaska and Western Canada, and among the races inhabiting Northern Scandinavia. A large proportion of potatoes in the diet encourages no such predisposition to dental disease as is the case with cereals; populations showing relative freedom from dental disease with high consumption of potatoes are found in certain islands of the Hebrides, in rural Finland and in Poland, and in Tristan da Cunha, in which island at the present time potatoes form a large proportion of the dietary, and dental caries is a rarity. Potatoes are also a valuable source of iron and Vitamin C and one of particular value, because they retain a high proportion of their Vitamin C content after cooking" (p. 93).
        It is curious, however, to note how local the excessive consumption of sugar actually remains in the modern world. Thus, while in France and Germany respectively only 24.6 and 26.1 kilos are consumed per head per annum, in England and the U.S.A. 45.9 and 54.0 kilos respectively are consumed per head per annum. And the same applies to meat. The recent increase in meat consumption has been much more spectacular in the United Kingdom (64 kilos per head per annum) and U.S.A. (65.3 kilos per head per annum) than in either France (34 kilos per head per annum) or Germany (44 kilos per head per annum). While in Italy, where the incidence of cancer, for instance, is relatively low, the consumption of meat is only 18.9 kilos per head per annum (pp. 109–110).
        As regards butter, the recent increase in the consumption of which the present writer, for many reasons, does not contemplate with the same complacency as the compilers of the Report, it is of interest to note that commercial products like margarine are now being prepared with the same Vitamin A and D content as good butter. But it is well to enter a caveat against too implicit a trust in these newfangled chemical confections, seeing that in Denmark, where presumably these new products are available, and where the "total consumption of fat . . . is composed to so large an extent of margarine," a deficiency of Vitamin A has been observed in recent years (p. 123).

Home

Texts