Fitness

Next you think of the potentialities of the school cafeteria managers and the foods teachers. If you can get them personally interested, you know the rest will follow. Once enthusiastic, a foods teacher could not look herself in the mirror if she used the disease-producing methods which many such teachers do now. She holds a vision of the future of the students in her classes, so soon to be husbands, wives, and parents. She visualizes healthy mothers, their pregnancies a joy, their deliveries easy, their children beautiful. She knows that these boys and girls, once taught nutrition, will produce tomorrow’s leaders, thinkers, and doers.

Soon you see the potential good an athletic coach can accomplish. He is already interested in health; his athletes are almost crying for knowledge of nutrition. Without any trouble at all you get him to rush in scarcely thinking of the timid wise men. He gets enthusiastic approval because everyone wants the team to win. Several coaches have told me that the boys make a touchdown for tiger’s milk or wheat germ at every football game. I know of one basketball team which won a championship with good nutrition last year; the physician at this school said he could scarcely believe the improvement he found. A university physician gave me an even more glowing report: much less fatigue among the boys; the crew ending the season without enlarged hearts; broken bones healing more quickly than ever before. These coaches and physicians will be writing articles for their journals before long; they, too, become enthusiastic and cannot help themselves.

After you go to bed, you lie awake thinking that adult education classes in nutrition should be taught in every evening school. You look around for someone to teach such a class, perhaps a physician, a nurse, or the hospital dietitian; after you talk to this person, you go to the principal of adult education, then to your neighbors to be sure that they turn out for the class. If you cannot find anyone else, you study like mad and then offer to teach it yourself. Perhaps you even go back to college for a few courses in chemistry or foods.

You realize that nutrition should be taught in every medical school but feel that you can do nothing about it. Who do you suppose has already forced some medical schools to teach this subject? You have. For example, the reason physicians are giving so many shots of vitamin B12 is that patients demand them. If you get enough people interested in nutrition, you will all find yourselves asking your physicians such questions as: “Where am I going to get linoleic acid on a fat-free diet?” “Why aren’t you giving the baby any vitamin E?” “Doctor, will you give Johnny a vitamin-C shot?” “How many milligrams of pantothenic acid do you think I should take?” When physicians hear enough questions they cannot answer concerning nutrition, the subject will be taught in every medical school; thousands of practicing physicians are on the staffs of such schools.

If you have any contact with hospitals, you quickly realize that someone should do something about the food they serve. The dietitian’s hands are usually tied; she does not see the patients, let alone learn to love them or to feel concerned about their needs. She must meet the budget. Surveys have shown that the meals in approximately two-thirds of the hospitals in the United States do not meet the minimum nutritional requirements set up by the National Research Council in any respect, even calories.

There are three small hospitals I personally know of where a patient has a reasonable chance of recovering rapidly; two are run by physicians who know nutrition. At the third, the Sister Kenny Polio Hospital at EI Monte, California, the entire personnel, nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, and kitchen help, were requested to attend a lecture course in nutrition given by Dr. Michael Walsh. Dr. Walsh also helped to supervise the application of nutrition in the meals served the patients and also those for the staff. The health of physicians, who were originally antagonistic to the program, has so improved that they are now enthusiastic.

Often parents have refused to allow their children to stay in a hospital where the food was inadequate. Frequently nutrition-minded people bring good food to a member of their family or a friend in a hospital; the attending physician may be surprised at the speedy recovery, ask questions, and make similar recommendations to other patients. Certain patients in our county hospital are now being given brewers’ yeast; everyone able to swallow on the polio ward has vitamin-C tablets handed him almost every hour; I suspect some mother or friend started both practices.

This report is not imaginary. It is what is actually happening all over America. The snowball is rolling on and on. Wonderful “fools,” more and more of them, keep rushing in. A big job is being done by big people, the big people who are sometimes mistakenly called the “little” people, by uncommon men so wrongly called, individually, the “common man.” I could give you the names and addresses of hundreds of these big people, some of whom have changed the lives of almost everyone in their communities. They are people like Celia Massie in Grants Pass, Oregon, Mildred Hatch at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Amy Tapping at Plainfield, New Jersey, Bernice Hicks at Bellingham, Washington, and the Clive McCays at Ithaca, New York. In California Homer Dahlman at Paradise, Eleanor Kingsley at Pomona, Douglas Campbell and Rhoda Kellogg in San Francisco, Alfreda Rook at Vista, Harold Stone in La Habra and Gladys Lindberg in Los Angeles are all doing magnificent work. Making such a list is like sending out wedding invitations; you do not know where to stop. Without any specialized training, any organization, or any particular leadership, without one cent of tax money and without even any work but just a lot of fun, we can collectively solve this problem of America’s malnutrition.

Although much is being done, there is still much to do. It cannot be done fast enough. Millions of persons of all ages are still going to suffer needlessly. Spastic, feeble-minded, or disease-susceptible babies are still to be born. Children now fairly healthy will hate ugliness still to be produced or will live out years in iron lungs. Arteries now elastic are still to be filled with cholesterol, mouths to be filled with dentures, and hearts to be filled with dread. If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the groaning, sobbing and pleading for help, groaning and sobbing which you can prevent, help which you can give. There is work for everyone; every talent is sought. Equally important is the discipline of the scientist, the humanitarianism of the clinician, and the enthusiasm of the amateur.

Every person who has the ability to see our country’s need can help to fill that need. It is part of my creed-of my region if you like-that when you have the ability to help ,our fellow man, that ability ceases to be merely an ability and becomes a responsibility. It is part of my faith that this responsibility will be shouldered by the big people of America.