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Show Let Our Motto Be GOOD HEALTH BY DR. LLOYD ARNOLD Professor of Bacteriology tnd Preventive Medicine, University of Illinois, College of Medicine. NO MAN TOO RICH TO EAT CABBAGE Down through the ages the rich man as a general rule has disdained to eat lilt Lillila Llltlt were so common that the poor man could have them. He seemed to think that he lost caste If he ate common food. If grapes were abundant In his own territory, then his palate found the flavor "coarse," and he had to send for those from another territory. And so with everything. There must be expense either In the gathering, the transportation or the preparation. Otherwise, why be rich? The early Greeks and the early Romans Ro-mans were a fairly healthy people. They used many herbs. Then they waxed rich and herbs became too ordinary. or-dinary. So scurvy developed among them, not among the rich who got their fruit juices, but among the slaves In their households, who were fed only upon the scraps. And a curious thing happened. When the slaves got the loathsome scurvy, their employers drove them out of their houses, and as there was no other place to go, they took refuge In the mountains or the forests. There they had to live upon whatever they could find wild plants, roots, herbs, fruits, with an occasional morsel of snake, scorpion, toad or worm for flavoring. The green things of course cured the scurvy, but, as they didn't know that, when they returned to the city, they gave the credit to the snakes and the scorpions and the toads. Quacks and charlatans took up these cures, and so through the centuries there have been some weird broths and stews recommended for the cure of scurvy. Now, though, there is hardly a person per-son who hasn't heard that vegetables and fruits are very essential If we are to have a healthy, balanced diet. There is no millionaire if any millionaires mil-lionaires are left who is so rich that he can get along without the common vegetables on his table. He can't banish ban-ish the cabbage family and not regret it, and carrots and spinach and dandelions dande-lions come. on his table, too. He has learned that if you want to be healthy, you have to obey the rules of health, and one of those rules is green vegetables, vege-tables, and the more common the vegetable vege-table the better. Indeed, the strange fact Is that now the people In this country who use the fewrest vegetables are the farmers who make their living from the soil. This indictment does not hold true of course for all farmers. There are many farmers who live most sensibly and Intelligently. They set the best table Imaginable. But to each of these there are hundreds whose meals day after day consist of bread and cereals, meat, potatoes, beans, jams, pie and cake and coffee. They can go weeks on end without having fresh fruit or a single vegetable, and unless there Is a small child in the house, they send all the milk to the dairy. The automobile Is undoubtedly partly part-ly responsible for this limited menu. In the old days every farmer, no mat ter what his major crop was, planted a kitchen garden. Or maybe his wife did It. And from that garden went bushels of carrots, turnips, rutabagas, onions, beets and cabbage Into root cellars or deep trenches to give variety va-riety and taste to the winter meals. There were barrels of apples. Celery was laid out to blanch. In the fall the kitchen was redolent with the fragrance of pickles preserved In vinegar vine-gar and spices. Now what has happened? Since the advent of the automobne. no one wants to stay home to tend the garden or to put up fruit. The women argue, "The canners do such a good job of canning, why should we bother?" And the men say, "Modern refrigeration cars have made it possible to ship green vegetables from California or Texas or Florida all winter now, and they sell very cheaply." This is all good logic and it would be fine if it were carried through. But the trouble is the money crop on the farm doesn't always bring in money, and then there isn't the cash to buy j these foods from the grocer, for after all the grocer does charge more than if you raised them yourself. And then i gasoline costs money. I am not arguing against automobiles. automo-biles. The automobile has made the farmer a citizen of th world and has been an Immeasurable boon to the farmer's wife who often was practically prac-tically imprisoned on the farm. But It Is not wholly a blessing if It Is the cause of the fanner's limiting his food until he becomes a leather-skinned, prematurely old Individual, who Is al- ways tired and listless, with dry, dead hair and brittle finger nails. These are Infallible signs of nutrition deficiency. de-ficiency. It would seem logical that farmers and village people who may have clean air Just by stepping outside theli doors, should be the nation's healthiest people. But it Is the city people that have this distinction. And the reason Is chiefly an abundance of green vegetables In the diet ). Western Newspaper Union. |