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Perfect Food for Health.
The quality of our food, be it vegetable, fruit, animal, or bird, is dependent
on the quality of the soil it is raised upon. In the vegetable kingdom plants
which are grown in soil rich in humus or compost are sturdier, more fully
developed and far healthier than those grown on poor soil. The healthy plants
seem to develop within themselves disease-resisting substances which the
poor ones appear to lack. Animals and human beings fed on the healthy
plants receive in turn the disease-preventing substances, and are far less liable
not only to numerous ailments, but also to the degenerative changes or premature
old age of certain parts of the body. In addition these well-fed animals
and people can withstand greater physical and mental strain; they can work
harder and longer; and in them the onset of the feebleness of old age is
delayed.
I wish we could be sure that we always ate food from compost-enriched
soils. I sometimes wonder if part of the weariness of our nation is not due to
eating food, often from abroad, which is grown on land over-exhausted and
depleted in its biological potential. Not only is our food of poor quality in
the first instance, but it is often subjected to further ill-treatment by processes
of refining, whitening, canning, re-constituting, dehydrating and bad cooking.
All of these processes in some way reduce the health-giving constituents of
our food. It is no wonder that our bodies do not receive all the ingredients
necessary to build up full resistance to disease.
We should put back into our fields, our allotments and gardens every
scrap of organic waste we come by. If every householder separated the house
refuse into three parts—first the ashes and tins into one dustbin; second the
paper in another dustbin; and third all organic waste such as food scraps,
cabbage leaves and peelings into a receptacle which could be emptied every
day into a composting box and covered every few days with soil—not only
would there be a saving in the refuse collection service, but the compost so
provided would enrich our gardens and produce much more health-giving
plants.
The quality of food deteriorates the longer it is kept. Our home-produced
eggs are probably not less than four to five weeks old by the time we get them
in the larger towns; our milk is four to five days old; our vegetables often
look sick with old age; and our fish is tasteless after its sojourn in Scotland
and on the railway; our meat is often only just on this side of the borderline
of fitness for human consumption. Can we not improve on this ?
We should demand whole meal bread and cereals—that is those containing
the wheat germ with its essential fertility vitamin E—and we should replace
our stodgy, starchy diets by balanced meals containing a much greater
proportion of fresh raw fruits and vegetables.
Hard Work.
We are constantly being urged to work harder in the national interest.
By harder work, it is alleged, we shall overcome the shortages which necessitate
the time-consuming controls which frustrate us at every turn. But a man
cannot work hard on an inadequate diet. Although a diet may contain sufficient
carbohydrates, proteins, fats and calories, yet if it is lacking in disease-resisting
and fatigue-preventing substances, then the sustained effort necessary over
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