What kind of food does a man need to keep fit and
free from disease? A perusal of the following will explain how far short our
average diet is of a good, balanced diet, which alone can sustain and keep us
healthy. Some of the necessary things for our system are water, mineral salt,
carbohydrates, fats, proteins, roughage and the vitamins. Water and mineral
salts are found in fresh vegetables. Carbohydrates are made up of sugars and
starches and are found in potatoes, bread, and sugar and in cereals as wheat
and barley. Fats produce energy and warmth. Provides (foods containing
proteins) are needed to repair tissue-waste and to build up the body. Hence
children, who run about the play and move more often than grownups, need far
more proteins. Roughage is the indigestible part of our food which is passed out
of the body, carrying out with itself poisons, thus helping to keep the body
clean and healthy.
Food is needed (I) to produce growth, (2) to
repair wear and tear of body tissues, and (3) to produce energy and heat.
Proteins produce growth and repair waste; carbohydrates and fats produce energy
and heat. But along with these kinds of foods are other foods called vitamins,
which are mixed with them. Without vitamins all our food is useless, like so
much dead-matter -- lifeless.
In order to have a diet which helps the body to
grow and to resist disease, it is obvious that we should have a selected diet,
which should contain several elements in it. It is clear that a better diet
than the nation has at present will require more food stuffs in the country.
more money with average person to buy them, and consequently greater production
and planning than is anywhere in evidence so far.
To come to the question of a diet which should
satisfy all the needs of the body, that is, provides salts, carbohydrates,
fats, proteins and vitamins in sufficient quantities, and also be within the
pocket of the average man, we may place the following list from which out of
each class one food must form part of a person’s meal every day though it may
be said that some things are not perfect by anything else. Milk is the perfect
food, which builds up and repairs the body perfectly. Select your foods out of
the following groups, omitting to make use of no single group :
1. Wheat rice, millet's, barley, gram, maize, etc.
2. Milk, meat, fish, eggs, oils, ghee, butters,
3. Gur, Sugar, beet-root, dates, grapes. etc.
4. Green vegetables, leaf vegetables sag.
5. Fruit Sweet or sour-sweet, like orange.
The presence of all or most of these elements in
one’s daily diet will help to keep the. Body in a fit condition of growth and
health. Though, of course, it has to be pointed out that, in order to cable the
average citizen to afford so much to eat, we have to increase our production many
times, which effort will take several ears of intensive national work?