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Show Advice on Your Health ly Morris Fishbein, Editor. Journal American Medical Association . Apparently the campaign for 1 alenderlsation that began after the World war Is beginning to show Its effect oa American women. A leading Insurance company has found, by comparing ths weights of women during 1922-23 1922-23 with their weights during 1932-34, that there has been a decline de-cline in the average weight for height at every age. The aver- . age weights have declined from I to S pounds. They affect older women as well as younger women. Actually the older women have reduced more because be-cause they weighed more In the first place and consequently had mora te lose. In an analysis for the reasons for consistent reduction In weight a good deal of credit I given to the campaign of education educa-tion oa the, dangers of overweight over-weight It Is doubtful, however, 4hat this campaign was the most effective cause. Excess weight after middle age Is associated with the chronic degenerative diseases of the heart, kidneys and blood vessels and also with diabetes. However, people who are underweight suffer suf-fer a higher mortality from tuberculosis tu-berculosis and pneumonia. If any . considerable number f women are questioned directly direct-ly as to why they have reduced their weights, It Is not likely that many of them will reply honestly that they reduced to Improve their health. It is much more likely that changes In eating hablu and In fashions have been the primary factors. In the first place, the Idols of American girls are the movie queens. The movie queens are thin. Indeed, the glamorous girls are gawky. There Is a reason rea-son tor this: Fat women do not photograph well In fart, thin women look bigger than they are. A Hollywood' star who wants to look thin on the screen has to be thinner than normal. Hollywood girls help to create the fashions, and fashion has aa Irresistible appeal to American women. When the ready-made dresses are prepared to fit a certain form, the vast majority of women fix themselves to fit the forms. With the Increasing knowledge knowl-edge of diet girls are being trained to choose their foods for essential factors rather than for bulk. Before we knew so much about food. It was necessary to eat large amounts of a wide variety va-riety of foods to get the essential essen-tial - factors. Nowadays the proper selection of proteins, mineral salts and vitamins permits per-mits a reduction in the total quantity of food. |