To People with Strong Convictions:
A holiday is the best of all opportunities for appreciating the opposite point of view to our own: this is why everyone needs a day's holiday once a week.
HEALTH QUERIES.
Under this heading our contributor, Dr Valentine Knaggs, deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest to health seekers and others.
In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.
Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on one side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[Eds.]
FAULTY FOOD COMBINATIONS.
H.E.H. writes.—I should like your opinion of the statement of the late Mr A. Broadbent, that fruit when taken with starchy food by dyspeptics delays digestion, and that the digestion of starchy foods and vegetables occupied only one-third of the time needed for the digestion of starch with fruit. I have lived on a strict vegetarian diet and observed the laws of hygiene for two and a half years, to rid myself of dyspepsia, with great success, having increased my weight by thirty-six pounds; for the last nine months of this time I have lived on a largely “unfired” diet, but am still troubled with acid risings and flatulence and cannot account for it. Will you kindly enlighten me on the subject?
I am a carpenter by trade and get eight hours in the open air every day. I take a tumbler of distilled water hot with the juice of one orange at 6 a.m., breakfast at 7.30 a.m., dinner at 12 noon and tea at 6 p.m., all consisting of Wallace unfermented bread and biscuits, various fruits (mostly apples, bananas and tomatoes) and nuts, about ½oz. at a meal; also a little cheese, about 1 oz. at a meal.
The late Mr A. Broadbent was quite right, in my opinion, when he asserted that fruit taken with starchy foods delayed digestion.