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adherence to a balanced regimen, unfortunately, tends to be somewhat intermittent.
During life, the average person eats about 30 tons of food at
a cost of approximately £6,000 but pays little attention to its
nutritional content. Yet nutritional knowledge is not only a matter
of health but, particularly in the poorer sections of the community,
it should form part of a family's economic policy of getting "value
for money". Unhappily palates, those most variable and deceiving
of senses, are the usual arbiters in food selection.
Maintenance of a balanced diet is essential for successful weight
control but, with children, this needs parental understanding,
support and encouragement. Young children learn eating habits
from their parents who, in general, have little knowledge of and
scant regard for the dietetic values of food and to many of whom
a balanced diet seems beyond comprehension. Over-indulgent
grand-parents and well intentioned neighbours are also factors
to be reckoned with in the struggle for a suitable regimen.
Any diet, however bizarre, provided it supplies insufficient
energy for metabolic needs will lead to weight reduction. But,
by and large, fad diets are bad diets because not only are they
usually nutritionally unsound but they are so markedly different
from the normal eating habits that their use tends to be ephemeral.
Adherence to an appropriate intelligent diet is effective even
though a favourable result may be long delayed. Success brings its
own reward but many become discouraged too easily. The secret is
to continue to eat the foods you like, balanced to provide good
nutrition, but in only half the quantities you would normally take.
This is not a dramatic solution but such a diet will be pleasant and
bearable and the chances of its early abandonment will be considerably lessened. Weight reduction will be slow but sure and the
spectre of those frightening degenerative diseases in middle and old
age will disappear.
Respiratory Diseases
Over the years man has learned to release nature's stored
energy to modify his surroundings but in such a way that he has
polluted his environment—a mistake which, very belatedly and
at great expense, he hastens to rectify.
For some considerable time now Britain has been a country
of the ever-burning hearth and smokey city which, together with its
damp climate, constitute a constant and serious respiratory hazard
to the very young and the very old. Moreover, despite improvements brought about by the Clean Air Acts, much of the
atmosphere of the country's urban areas remains polluted.