Fitness

If you have a child in school, you start getting the candy bars and soft-drink machines out of the corridors. You nose around the cafeteria, see the huge tubs of potatoes peeled one day and soaking until the next, the mountains of white bread, the oceans of sweet gelatin desserts made sweeter by juices left over from canned fruits used in cobblers; you go before the P.T.A., you give the principal and/or the school board a bad time, or you run for the school board yourself.

After you have applied personal nutrition for awhile, you feel it and look it. You hear yourself exclaiming, “I never felt better in my life!” Your friends who did not want advice now want what you have, the sparkle, the pep, the glow you radiate. They start asking you questions. Soon their reports come back: they are not tired any longer; the leg cramps or headaches have disappeared; their constipation is gone. You glow with pride, and your snowball gains momentum. They ask you to talk to their friends who have problems. The itch spreads; more and more people begin scratching.

Your educational campaign with the children starts paying dividends, just momentary flashes at first, like feminine fireflies calling their lovers. “We have better food than other people, don’t we, Mommie?” My son, sitting at a restaurant counter next to a woman drinking a soft drink, came out with this one, “Don’t you know that will hurt your teeth? I’ll drink it if you like, and you can save your teeth.” Barbara brings her doll’s bottle to me, lfs inch across at the top, “Mommie, put yeast in my baby’s formula.” You will hear similar comments. The older children bring their friends with pimples and menstrual cramps to you. You feel happy inside, knowing some day you will have beautiful grandchildren.

Perhaps you start a nutrition cooking school in your home; several friends of mine have, charging a fee for each person who attends. One girl, infected with a splendid case of divine itch, charges, but her fee is not monetary. She agreed to teach four of her friends how to make whole-wheat bread provided each of them would teach four friends who would agree to teach four of their friends. Soon the lessons included the making of yogurt, high-protein custard, cookies prepared with vegetable oil, and meat loaf fortified with powdered milk and wheat germ. Spirited discussions of nutrition take place at each lesson. The chain of her Magnificent Obsession continues to lengthen.

You may get interested in the 4H Clubs, an organization of farm youngsters thousands strong, to whom practical nutrition could be so easily and wonderfully taught and applied. You read the surveys showing that the health of farm children is inferior to that of city children, an ironical twist of fate which you realize should not be so; you know that a few itchy fools could quickly change that. Perhaps you become a leader of a garden club and teach biological methods and the nutritive value of the foods; or you help the little girls make breads, muffins, and cookies of whole-wheat and soy flour. You teach them to put some meaning into their 4Hs by allowing their hearts to feel the need for alert heads to direct capable hands into helping build national health.