The Value of Sugar

If a word to the wise is sufficient, we would judge the American Public "wise."

A short while ago news columns were printing the evils of obesity, proclaiming the steadily mounting number of diabetics that were being treated each year and decrying the use of sweets. With such thoroughness did the public seize upon and use this knowledge that now a great wave of warning is being issued upon the dangers of the opposite extreme. The idea of dieting and keeping the boyish figure has taken such unnatural hold upon us that undernourishment and the attendant evils, such as inability to withstand infection and lowered fatigue time, are beginning to be noted by those who are interested in human welfare.

It is an interesting commentary that the Sugar Institute has seen fit to establish a definite campaign to regain the favor that threatened to be lost in this over-zealous response.

In this effort the medical profession can do nothing better than to sanction a reasonable place of carbohydrate in the normal diet, and point out the value of easily digested sweets in....(cut off)

"Quick Energy" for Quick Children

Childhood has a new heroine. All the curly-haired girls and the straight-limbed boys of this generation have added Dr. S. Josephine Baker to the little Hall of Fame which includes Santa Clause, Fairy Godmothers and Cinderella. Dr. Baker's elevation came with her recent pronouncement that candy is good for children, and that they should have it regularly.

"Treat candy and other forms of sweets as food", Dr. Baker says in the Ladies Home Journal. "Remember that they have a place in any well-balanced diet just as all other varieties of food have. Pure candy is a safe and requistite food for children as well as for adults. It has one advantage over plain sugar in the diet in that it contains not only sugar, but also variable amounts of other needed food elements, depending upon the type of candy selected.  

"The craving that children have for sweets is an expression of a definite bodily need. Children expend energy with a prodigal hand. If we are to give them the strength to meet this expenditure, their bodies must have a large reserve supply of energy-producing elements, and an additional sufficient amount for immediately available use. The reserve supply is made possible by the inclusion of sufficient fats and starchy foods in their diet. The quick energy food is sugar."

Wholesome Caution

Dr. J.S. Hughes, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, has rendered a genuine service to education as well as to economic sociology.

Rat professionalism has needed some scientific authority to say plainly what Dr. Hughes has said so effectively in his article in Hygeia, the Health magazine published by the American Medical Association.

Professionalism has suffered almost irrevocable harm by allowing loose statements and unscientific experiments to be favored because they are attractive by their newness. Dr Hughes says:--

"Children are led to believe certain essential foods, necessary to build up strong, healthy bodies, are harmful because rats, fed on pre-arranged diets containing the food in question, fail to thrive."

"Unfortunately, the experiments that are being conducted in many schools are giving children erroneous ideas concerning the influence of ordinary foods on their health. The experiments are planned on the old idea that certain foods are harmful, rather thatn on the modern view that it is leaving certain foods out of the diet that is harmful. It is from experiments of this type that the erroneous idea has become prevalent that...