Describes how a healthy diet can contribute to staying well. Notes that rates of heart disease vary tremendously throughout the world. Japan has far lower rates than Finland. The traditional Japanese diet was lower in fat, and especially saturated fat. In Finland, hard-working farmers buttered their cheese, and that they had heart disease. And Japanese who moved to Hawaii and changed their diet soon developed heart problems at the same rate as their fellow Americans.
CIVILIZED living is an intelligent search for durable satisfaction, a nice compromise between the pleasures of the moment and those of the future. So it is with eating; a balance should be struck between first impulse and appreciation of the consequences of such indulgence. The child learns to save room for pudding; the civilized adult knows that the continuance of pleasure, in eating as in other …
The tables at the end of this book indicate the amount of fat in average samples of various meats and the approximate proportion of the fatty acid that is of the saturated type. Note that both total fat and the fatty acid composition vary somewhat according to the age and diet of the animal. The young animals of the species tend to be leaner than the older ones - a rule that holds for the human sp…
The easiest and surest way to reduce the meat fat in the diet is to reduce the size of the portions, and this also helps to keep the total calories of the diet within bounds. The large servings of meat now so common in businessmen's lunches are a sign of status rather than of nutritional requirement and can only be justified when the rest of the meal is poorly designed and prepared. Huge servings …
THE word dessert comes from the French desservir, to remove what has been served, and originally meant things to eat while the table was being cleared away after the meal. William Vaughan, in The Golden Grove, labelled as "barbarous" this "foreign" custom of eating extra dainties - fruits, nuts, and "sweetmeats", but apparently it was even then, in 1600, becoming firmly established in this country…
Ices and ice cream have a place in the eating scheme but not ideally, in our opinion, after a regular meal. A sherbet or water ice is acceptable in regard to fat, so if you like them for dessert go ahead. Such ices, with or without coffee, are better we think, at an evening party before the guests leave or on summer Sunday afternoons when you plan to have only a snack for supper later. Ordinary ic…
THE dieter often works out a good scheme to control calories and fats at the three main meals of the day, only to run afoul in the uncharted area of mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks, sandwiches, appetizers, and snacks. Morning and afternoon tea breaks, a trusted meal in a cafeteria or bar, appetizers before dinner, and snacks before bed can add up to wreck the dietary plan. The old chestnut ab…
Snacks are notorious contributors to obesity and they can easily add too much to your daily fat quota. The ideal snack is an apple or an orange or a banana, but too often the urge for a bite to eat will not be put off that easily. What then? A cup of tea with sugar and milk will ward off more serious calorie and fat loading if you give it a chance. Drink it slowly, wait a minute or two, and see if…
ALCOHOLIC beverages, especially wine, require discussion because, if you value them in your scheme of things, you will wonder about their relationship to health and to the rest of your diet. We are not talking about alcoholism; the drunkard is an affront to himself and mankind and his health prospects are bleak. But wines, and even stronger beverages, have a place in civilized living and eating. T…
Good wines are produced in Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Chile, and in the Argentine but the best of these are rarely obtainable in the United Kingdom. Fairly good red wines are produced in great quantity in North Africa and much of the yin ordinaire sold in France is more Algerian than French. The good wines of Yugoslavia and of Russia are not apt to appear in your local shops. Finally, you may …
Beers and ales lack the subtleties and gastronomic importance of wines. Some fanciers talk interminably on the varieties of beers and ales, but these beverages have only limited virtue in connection with good food. Beer has a special affinity for raw oysters, but otherwise it goes best with plain hearty, fatty foods that have little place in a cuisine designed to let you eat well and stay well. Bu…
IN the usual British diet non-alcoholic beverages contribute a fair number of calories, variable amounts of other nutrients, and a great deal of pleasure. Plain water heads the list, of course, but many people actually get more water from other sources because they want more than simply to slake thirst. Tea and coffee have no nutritional value of themselves but they do serve as vehicles for the co…
For thirst-quenching refreshment nothing excels - actually we think nothing equals - cold fruit-juice preparations, especially those made with citrus fruits. The acidity of these latter refreshes the mouth in a way not possible with other fizzier soft drinks, no matter how heavy the charge of carbon dioxide. Beer, lemonade and orangeades have the added advantage of providing large amounts of ascor…
Ask yourself why you ate what you did last week and you will probably answer that you ate the foods you liked so far as it was convenient to get them. And then you may add that you ate what was "good" for you. Human diets are always compromises between what appeals to our appetites, what foods we have available, and what we think we should eat for strength and health. All peoples have strong convi…
Heart disease accounts for about half of all deaths in America today and the figures are rising throughout the Western world. But there are many kinds of heart diseases, with different causes, and we are concerned here only with one kind of heart disease, coronary heart disease. A brief review of the kinds of heart diseases should be helpful. Congenital heart disease is the kind you are born with.…
Coronary heart disease is sometimes called arteriosclerotic heart disease because the primary disorder is in the arteries. The heart muscle depends for its nourishment and "breathes" through the coronary arteries that form a crown ("corona") around the heart before they plunge down into the heart muscle to bring fresh blood to every cell. Any interference with this blood supply is dangerous and ca…
Every day we read about prominent men dying of a "heart attack" in the prime of life; such news items about women are not at all common. Why? Well, of course men are more in the news than women anyway but the fact is that over most of the life-span coronary heart disease is much less of a threat to women than to men. This is clear from the vital statistics given in Table 1, though these data may e…
Categorical denials are dangerous in science. We prefer to answer the tension argument in this way: There is no objective evidence in man or animals that prolonged tension or emotional strain, or any number of periods of emotional excitement, can induce atherosclerosis or cause the blood to clot in the arteries. But emotions can certainly alter our way of life, reduce us to immobility or fire us t…
Is salt in the diet bad for the heart? This question is often asked because it has been suggested that a high salt intake may promote high blood pressure and because many heart patients are advised by their doctors to eat a low salt diet. Salt restriction is important for the patient with heart failure because it helps to control oedema. In heart failure the heart is sluggish in moving the blood a…
BOOKS on nutrition tend to be either highly technical, that is to say full of impressive biochemistry which is not really essential for the household and kitchen manager, or they set out to rescue us from one or another kind of starvation by filling us up with amino acids, vitamins, and minerals on the debatable thesis that we are all dying from "hidden hunger". Usually the sins of excessive nutri…
Proteins are good (but expensive) sources of calories, but they have another great nutritional value not shared by carbohydrates or fats. Protein is the real living stuff of the body; an abundance of it is necessary for growth. Even in the adult the protein in the body does not stay still, it is continuously being broken down and built up again, and a little is lost along the way. The minimal prot…
Vitamins are accessory nutrients, chemical compounds necessary for the body and its metabolism, that the body cannot make for itself but must obtain from foods. In spite of the fact that a good diet will supply all you need, a vast business has been built up on the fears and wishful thinking of a nutritionally gullible public. Fortunately, excesses of vitamins seem to be harmless except for those …
Small amounts of certain "unsaturated" fatty acids may be essential for full health of man, though there is no conclusive evidence on this score. Linoleic acid is the most talked about of these fatty acids. It is so abundant in almost all vegetable oils that it is difficult to devise a diet that could approach a critical level, if there is one. Certainly the general diet recommended here, using ve…
The minerals in foods are important, of course, but they are not apt to be critical for adults living on the kinds of foods and menus recommended in this book. Calcium for bones and iron for blood will not be lacking, phosphorus is not a problem anyway, and the diet we propose is unusually rich in potassium. As for iodine, our liberal use of fish provides more iodine than in most diets. Sodium, wh…
THE main purpose of this book is not merely to provide a guide to good nutrition at a low total fat level; almost equally important is the proper selection of the fats you eat. We have paid careful attention to this in the menus and recipes offered. If you only want practical advice without worrying about the reasons involved, it may be enough to observe the following points: All food fats and oil…
In Chapter 1 we discussed fats in connection with blood cholesterol and the development of atherosclerosis. We observed that ordinary food fats are triglycerides, that is, combinations of three fatty acid molecules with one molecule of glycerol. The latter amounts to less than 10 per cent of the whole in most fats, and the differences between various fats depend entirely on the fatty acids involve…
Cholesterol, the chief reason for writing this book, is a greasy or waxy substance, essentially tasteless and odourless, insoluble in water but easily dissolved in fat solvents such as ether and petrol. Cholesterol is not a fat at all but is found associated with the true fats in the animal body. Chemically, cholesterol is an unsaturated monohydric alcohol belonging to the family of sterols which …
THE urge to reduce is most commonly based on the wish to be more attractive, and this is true of men almost as much as of women. The most common reason for reducing is the fact that it is uncomfortable to be fat. These more immediate personal considerations are apt to be more persuasive than talk about possible health problems in the future, but if you are fat, reducing offers three motives: You w…
Weight measurements do not necessarily give good estimates of body fatness or obesity. The height-weight tables used to decide whether or not you are overweight merely list the average weights for people of given height, age, and sex who were sold life insurance policies 50 to 60 years ago. The measurements were made "as ordinarily clothed" - in the style of 1895! No judgments about obesity or "fr…
RED U C IN G takes time and effort, so it should be properly planned. With only common sense, some understanding of the calorie value of foods, and the information given in the previous chapter, it is possible to reduce successfully. But a scientific programme adjusted to the needs of the individual, is safer, surer, and more efficient. You can devise your own programme of scientific reducing, mer…
Suppose you weigh 14 stones; your present balance point is 2,400 calories and your basal metabolism amounts to 1,600 calories daily. You select a 1,400-calorie diet so the crude deficit is 1,000 calories a day. The true calorie deficit turns out to be 900 at the start, because of the change in specific dynamic action; this becomes less when you actually lose some weight. When 20 pounds of the orig…
The simplest and least reliable way of estimating the present calorie balance point requires only information about the patient's age, sex, present body weight, and occupation. It is assumed that the basal metabolism is not far from normal and that the activity of the patient is similar to that of other obese persons in the same occupation and cultural environment. Table 5 (for men) and Table 6 (f…
Earlier in this chapter the calorie cost of physical activity was discussed. Table 9 shows the calorie cost of walking. The inclusion of increased exercise and physical activity in the reducing programme is advisable, both to help lose weight and to make a stronger and, we think, healthier body. A daily quota of an hour of fairly brisk walking or busy work in the garden is desirable. This is to be…
LIKE everyone else, you probably want more energy. Even young people complain that they are not absolutely tireless, and the rest of us wish we could regain the vigour we once had, so naturally we are receptive to almost any theory that promises to help us avoid fatigue. Though we may be too intelligent nowadays to be taken in by preposterous claims for fancy tonics and nostrums, it is not unreaso…
If you are overly fat or excessively thin your energy is apt to have a low evaporation point. Excess weight takes extra energy to move it around. On the other hand, the very thin person may have too little fuel stored in the body to keep the machinery running for hours at a time without rest and recharging. Obesity should be corrected if present. Do not be surprised if your energy is diminished wh…
THIS book is concerned with the diet for normal adults and some who are not so normal - fat people, coronary patients, and those special candidates for coronary heart disease who have high blood cholesterol values. But what about athletes and invalids and sick people other than coronary patients? Sick people should have the dietary advice of a physician who considers their individual peculiarities…
In the effort to control blood sugar in diabetes, dietary management used to be concentrated on restriction of sugar and on secondary restriction of carbohydrates as providers of sugar. This meant either starving the patients on a diet too low in calories or giving them a high fat diet. Many diabetic patients were maintained on high fat diets in the pre-insulin era (before 1923), but some experts …
THE French, who have a sure instinct about foods, insist that nothing can match a good soup to start the meal. The Chinese, who take second place to none in cookery, go further and often eat two or more soups at a meal. The Scots, too, have a long tradition of soup, but with the increasing rush and complication of modern urban life the custom of eating soup is dying out, a victim of the general mo…
Cream soups are more of a problem. The typical cream soup involves ingredients saut?ed in butter, much rich milk or cream, and perhaps egg yolks. The result is an emulsion of fat, mostly of the saturated type. But ingenuity can allow us to have cream soups. Vegetable oil may be substituted for half or more of the butter and skim milk may be used in place of the rich milk or cream. If need be, a bi…
THAT bread should be called the staff of life seems strange if we look only at the contemporary scene. Surely most of the anaemic windbags of a loaf at the near-by baker's shop could vanish unwept. But breads, and the cereal grains, have not only supported physical life longer than recorded history; our whole Western civilization was made possible by them. The cultivation of barley and wheat ended…
VEGETABLE cookery is a better test of a good cook than fancy desserts. At its best it is most simple; the freshest of vegetables at just the right maturity, the briefest of cooking in the least water, and served at once. This way vegetables bring grace and lightness to a meal, they supply vitamins, minerals, and a pleasant sense of fullness - with very little fat and few calories. Excess water and…
In the Mediterranean countries salads are a mixture of a few raw vegetables, with lettuce predominating, flavoured with oil, vinegar, and salt. And it is difficult to find a better way to complement almost any dinner than by such a simple green salad, preferably served after the main dish, when coolness and crispness and a bit of acidity bring lightness and refreshment. Crisp but delicate leaves p…
THE non-fat part of milk is an unsurpassed food for old and young alike; butterfat is almost unequalled as a dietary promoter of cholesterol in the blood. Infant mortality is lowest in countries where milk is abundant. We have yet to discover a population where adults eat little butterfat which has a serious problem of coronary heart disease. What should sensible adults make of this? An abundance …
Ever since 1926, when the Medical Research Council's report of Dr. Corry Mann's experiment of giving an extra pint of milk to boys in a children's home showed that it improved their growth, British nutritional policy has encouraged milk drinking for children. And the British dairy industry has been geared to produce milk. There is, however, a deeply ingrained feeling that milk should be creamy if …
Egg cookery could easily fill a book by itself, but with eggs as variable as they are now and with our knowledge as limited as it is, vie do not dare go too far on this pleasant subject. The menus and recipes in this book are fairly abstemious in regard to eggs, but eat more if your blood cholesterol justifies it. In any case we hope you will make up in quality for any shortage in quantity. In oth…
AMONG the pleasures awaiting persons who have concentrated too long on meat, few will surpass the discovery of fish and shellfish. And the best of it is that you can eat all of it you want without fear of obesity or cholesterol if you exercise a little restraint and admit that fish need not swim in fat-rich sauces. Nearly everyone in the British Isles lives within a hundred miles of the sea so tha…
WHAT shall we have for dinner? Generally this question means "what kind of meat course?" and only occasionally do we think of fish or eggs as alternatives for the central place in the meal. Beef, mutton and pork together with bacon supply around 30 per cent of the total fats and close to half of the saturated fatty acids in the usual British diet at present. Chicken, veal, lamb, and the "variety" …