The New Haven Union

HEALTH AND BEAUTY
REFORMING NATURE'S DIET.
The discovery is made that it is not so
much lack of food as improper food which
causes east-side school children to faint
at their desks. School principals are at
work on a plan to correct these conditions.
This is in effect a proposal to improve
and regulate the national diet. It meditates
an attack on an established institution. It is
true that the American dietary has been a
standing subject of European criticism for
generations. It scandalized Dickens and Mrs.
Trollope and it continues to excite the concern
of visitors from abroad. French chefs have
recently begun to find something to commend
in it, but their observations have been confined
to hotels where European standards of cuisine
obtain. For all that, the reproach of our pie
and baked beans and hot breads remains.
Yet it was on this diet that Gettysburg
and Appomattox were fought. On it the
telephone and electric light were invented.
The Concord philosophy was evolved on pie.
Considering the violation of dietetic laws,
the wonder must be what we might have
become if they had been respected.
If the youthful east-side digestive organs
are unable to cope with the food provided
for them, something should be done through
playgrounds and a larger allowance of fresh
air to strengthen them for the task. If city
school children are to grow up to build subways
and Hudson river tunnels their digestion must
not be mollycoddled.