Dier ror Men.—By Cecil Webb Johnson, M. B., cu.p., R.a.st.c. Mills Boon, Ld. 6/- net.
In one very important particular this book is different from ~most diet books. It is - not "cyanky," it is not extreme in any way. This is not to say an read it without resentment. We have always resented and will always resent any criticism of our eating from our mother's "chew it well, my darling" of our child-ood to the doctor's "cut down the meat and wine" of our middle-age. But the sad thing is that the resentment grows less; and when the time arrives when we can actually read a book on diet, for choice, it is a very humiliating (Major Webb-Johnson lets us down very lightly. It is not as bad as we thought. It is true we find that, all our lives, we have been eating the wrong things, in the wrong way, in the wrong amounts, at the wrong times. That we expected. It was our Growing suspicion of that fact which induced us to read.the book at all. But the depression of such knowledge is counterbalanced by the conviction that we must be very stout fellows to have survived so long on a diet which ought to have killed us years ago. And it is considerably alleviated by the knowledge that we may still have our juicy steak and glass of beer, our grilled chop and—no, probably the tomato sauce would be banned, though it is not mentioned. There is not much. "'cut out" instruction. There is none of the hot water and rusk and dried cereal regimen that we feared. It is mostly a matter of "cut down." It is true the author advises omitting breakfast. But that is no great difficulty for a man who has come tothe pass where He reads a book on dist.
Apart from special diets for the counteraction _of particular ailments, the author's general advice to middle-aged men, of sedentary occupation (who will no doubt form the majority of his readers) amounts to this: two meals a day and meat only at the second which should be taken some time after the day's work is finished. The stronger wines, port and sherry, and sparkling wines, retard digestion and should be taken cautiously The most beneficial wines are claret and Burgundy. There is no arm in an occasional well-diluted wi The cutting out of meat from the midday meal will probably appear to most people the hardest part of the dietary. But the auth-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.