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Show Baby Feeding Holds Key to Adult Obesity Obesity among many American Ameri-can adults may stem from over feeding of babies. There is no proof that cholesterol choles-terol levels and heart diseases are linked in a cause and effect relationship. Fad or crash diets are at best of no value and possibly harmful. As many as one of every four overweight persons may be the victim of a metalobic defect that makes them gain weight even when eating a proper and limited limit-ed diet. Eating three meals a day is not a necessary regimen for good health. In fact, a good way to lose weight is to eat more than three meals a day but to consume a fewer number of total calories. These are some of the views of six medical experts on nutrition nu-trition and dieting stated in the current issue of McCall's magazine. maga-zine. "The usual American concept of the well fed, plump or fat baby is probably not a desirable one from the viewpoint of health in adult years," stated Dr. Fred J. Stare, chairman of the department de-partment of Nutrition at the Harvard School Public Health. "Food is offered not only to satisfy hunger but as a reward, a punishment, or a bribe often I'm afraid as a substitute for attention and understanding. It is easier to give a child a cookie than to pay attention to what he really needs, and this concept of food as a panacea carries into adult life." The doctors agreed that fad diets would probably not cause physical harm to the person who attempted it, but that it would not do any good. Fad diets were sharply criticized, criti-cized, however, by Dr. William J. Darby, director of the Division Divi-sion of Nutrition at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. "Such diets manage to imply that there is a special magic, . an almost mythical power, in the particular food being emphasized. empha-sized. This, of course, is nonsense." non-sense." Dr. W. Stanley Hartcroft, director di-rector of the research institute at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, added that people who go on crash diets "become impossible impos-sible to live with. So whether they do themselves harm or not, they do harm to the people near them." While noting that excessive body fat endangers health, the doctors were unanimous in citing cit-ing lack of proof that high cho-lestrol cho-lestrol levels are linked in a cause and effect relationship of heart attacks. Dr. C. Glen King, president of the Nutrition Foundation, has urged people "to realize that fats in a mixed diet make a positive pos-itive contribution." Many overweight people are being truthful when they say they don't overeat, according to Dr. Edgar S. Gordon, Professor of Medicine, University Hospitals, Hos-pitals, University of Wisconsin. Dr. Gordon said studies show that such people suffer from a metabolic defect called metabolic obesity, "as easy to recognize as diabetes. I think it may account for about one-fourth of all obesity ob-esity cases." The doctors agreed that the three meal a day regimen is not necessarily the most conducive for health or proper weight. Many Americans really follow fol-low a one meal a day pattern, starving themselves at breakfast and eating a heavy dinner, Dr. Gordon noted. ! |