All intelligent people today are interested in their food, not at all because they are greedier than they used to be, but for the very sensible reason that they don't want to fill themselves up with foods which are no use to them.
'A frugal diet is not necessarily a bad one an unbalanced diet always is. Appetites vary so much that the quantity of food eaten is, in the last resort, a matter of choice, but the rough proportions of the various elements should be adhered to.
The balance may, however, vary according to occupation' and climate, whether special demands are being made on the body, and age. For instance,. the sedentary worker does not need the same quantity of carbohydrate as the manual worker, as he does not put out the same amount of physical energy.
In hot climates, too, less of the heating foods, sugar, starch, and especially fats, are required.
Too Much of a Good Thing In childhood the balance of the diet is often upset by poverty, but it is not so generally recognized that the well-to-do child's diet may also be completely wrong, often through the most earnest gi intentions of the mother.
The poor child gets too much starch and sugar and not enough fat and proteins, and the rich child gets too much fat and not enough starch and sugar. The first state of affairs can't be altered, but the second can.
Liking for and the ability to digest fats is an asset throughout life, for it is in animal fats that some of the most important vitamins are found, which help the body to resist infection and, in childhood, are important factors in building strong bones and teeth. [2001
Poor Old Sugar and Starch Knowing the value of fats, the richer mother often provides too large a proportion of eggs, butter, cream, meat fat and suet puddings. She knows also that sugar contains neither vitamins nor mineral salts, and that too much starch in the diet has been blamed for the catarrhal conditions and bad teeth from which so many poor children suffer.
Therefore she rigorously excludes sweets, prepares her child's fruit drinks and grapefruit without sugar, cuts down his potato ration and doesn't let him eat much bread.
If the child is under weight she strives to "feed him up" with more and more rich foods, ard is surprised if he doesn't seem to thrive and probably suffers from frequent bilious attacks.
The fact is that in dietetics as in other sciences, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and it is almost as bad to provide a diet overbalanced in fats as it is to give too much starch and sugar.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.