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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1960-01-07, Page 2Dangers Of The Slimming Craze She could never wear a swim- suit, a pair of slacks or e pretty dance dress. She never went to parties and she had; no boy friends, - At thee office the girls used to call her "Podge," or "Apple Dumpling" or "Two -ton Tessio!' FOR SHE WAS FAT AND SHE FELT AN OUTCAST, So twenty-one-year-old. Belie - de decided to start slimming. She gave up potatoes and bread, then she began living on liquids three days a week. She also took slimming pills, Within four months she dropped from 182 lbs. to 144 lbs, She started faint- ing, became ,depressed, unable to sleep, She had to stay away from work. "It used to make me wild the way she would not eat," said her father, "She took sandwiches td work and at home she would just pick at her food," Belinda was prescribed sleep- ing tablets and received psy- chiatric treatment. But within a few weeks she was dead, Her liver had been severely damaged by a drug which she had taken for slimming, said the coroner, Thousands of girls are risking their lives to -day by starving themselves in order to reduce weight. The trouble is they can't stop after losing a few pounds because they get what doctors call a "slimming neurosis." A fourteen -year-old girl dread- ed getting fat so she practically stopped eating, For the whole of one month she ate nothing but eggs and apples. Her weight dropped by 2 lb. a week. She became so thin and weak that she "wasted away" and died in hospital three months later. She had contracted pneumonia be- cause she refused to eat. But is this craze for a sylph- like figure really justified? There is a great difference between excessive overweight and pleas- ant plumpness. And some men prefer a plump girl. In fact, a fat girl has a better chance of finding a husband than a thin one, says Dr, R. W. Par- nell, research physician in psy- chological medicine at Oxford university, Giving a slap in the eye to the Siamerous film star brigade, he says that buxom girls are marry- ing off far more easily than the slim, willowy types. According to Dr. Parnell the type of girl seen most often at the altar to -day is "fat, fairly muscular and shortish," He rates her chances at ninety per cent. The thin, very tall girl apparen- tly. nds only a sixty per cent, ce. London girls marriage ed because she slimmed too Hazel was a fat and jolly bs., when her boy friend, n, proposed. She determined that by the time they married she would lose a lot of that ex- cess weight. Her daily diet for a year consisted of a slice of toast, a dry biscuit and a lettuce leaf. On her wedding day she was down to 140 lbs. But three months later they had parted. For Hazels personality had changed along with her statis- tics: she was no longer the same girl to Allan. "Hazel's figure has altered everything," said Allan, "She was a happy-go-lucky sort of person when we first met. I like fat people because they laugh and enjoy life. She's quite a different girl from the one I courted," Emotional troubles are not the only ones caused by excessive slimming. Overdoses of certain slimming tablets can turn honest folk into sneak thieves, say doc- tors. There was the case of a 224 lbs. Crewe man who took drugs to reduce his weight. They brought him down to 168 lbs., but, said a psychiatrist, they also caused him to break into a house, steal two passports, eight fires in the home of a former mayor of Crewe, and take a car without the owner's vonsent. "It all came about because he tried to get hie weight down, said the psychiatrist, One of the most tragic cases of excessive slimming was that of Allyn King, the beautftul Ziegfeld Follies girl of pre-war days. She became, the toast of New York. at 145 lbs., for at that time men liked their showgirls plump. Then suddenly the "Slim' Look" came to Broadway and Allyn was too fat. Strict dieting brought her down to 115 lbs. and won her a •new contract. But the manage- ment said she trust not put on more than 16 lbs. and her meas- urements must not vary . more than half an inch, Six years of torture followed for Allyn. Every day she took slimming pills and kept to a near -starvation diet, One day she collapsed. She went to a sanatorium for two years; but the strain had affected her mind as well as her body, She jump- ed to her death frons a fifth - floor window, Americans, who never do things by halves, spend $200,- 000,000 a year on trying to shed their loads. The Secretary of Health has now decided to take a close look at some of the pills, drugs and gadgets which, he says, are being "foisted off' on the public. "The only way to cure stout- ness is to stop eating," he says. "What is needed is a simple, safe and sane food, drug or de- vice which will bring about loss of body weight by helping a per- son to cut down food intake without damage. But that has not yet been produced." What is being done in Britain? A Ministry of Health spokesman says that in June, 1958, a depart- mental committee was appoint- ed to investigate drugs of .addic- tion which might be habit-form- ing, The committee was still hearing evidence and a report could not be expected until next year. Fat people have been a sub- ject for mirth or scorn for far too long. One of the most cruel references to obesity occurred in a song a few years ago,, "She's Too Fat For Me." This craze for slimness 'is not world-wide. Go to Morocco, for instance, and you'll find they like their women fat. "My plumpness is a real asset here," said a Tangier socialite. "I am passing middle -age but men still look at me with admiration." A Danish girl weighing 196 lbs., never had a single date in Copenhagen. But in Rabat she was pursued by wealthy young Moroccans who begged to take her out, In the South Seas, too, it'sa sign of beauty to be stout. This may be disillusioning if you be- lieve in those tales of slim, sinuous South Sea maidens but. it's vouched for by Bengt Dani- elssen, one of the Kon-Tiki crew. In his book, "Love in the South Seas," he quotes Sir Basil Thompson, prime minister to the native • King of Tonga at the close of the last century: "The perfect woman must be fat; her neck must be short .. , she must have no waist, and if nature has cursed her with that defect she must disguise it with draperies; her bust and hips and thighs must be colossal." Of course, some people are too fat, and they should try to shed their -loads, But they should do so by following a sensible diet, taking plenty of exercise, and by consulting their doctor about slimming pills. Far too many girls slim by skimping their meals, by living on coffee and toast. They be- come nervy and irritable, their work suffers and so does their appearance. As a result, they're far less likely to become brides than the girls who stuff themselves full of candy and cakes! SCARE TACTIC Poultry farmer Frank Wood- ward, of Bushey, England, com- plained to police that jet planes flying over his farm were ruin- ing him. They are scaring his chickens to death, he said, KEYS TO SURVIVAL - It looks like a typewriter, but this -is actually a new safety device by ah,ch anyone con send wire- less messages in Morse code, fJonufactured in Sweden, it Itsismits the appropriate dot and dash.signni for each key p•e1:ed. It is being installed in many lifeeoats. LION BY THE TAIL Donald Hunt, a Fernd.ple pet owner, exercises "Navy," a 9 -month -odd lion cub. Hunt believes the cub would make a fine present foi "the man who has every- th i ng." TA BLE Tmis 1411sees Pei 6a -oz. Anws. Duck, like most. poultry, may be roasted either with or with- out stuffing. Your stuffing base may be rice or bread or potatoes. Fruit is often added to duck stuffing, apples, prunes, and cranberries being most often used. Celery , and onion are also good to use in duck stuffing, and sometimes ducks are stuffed with sauers. kraut. k , Oven temperature for roast- ing cluck should be about 325 degrees F. throughout the cook- ing. Use a shallow pan, with no cover.' Add no water. A good rule for ,the' time of roasting is to .allow at least 30; minutes per pound and then test :for' doneness. The duck is done' when the thick portion of the drumstick feels quite soft when pressed, and 'the leg joint can be moved up and clown easily. Because, duck is fat, it ,needs no basting, but spreada glaze over your duck for the last 20 min- utes of baking, ORANGE GLAZE 2Y.i. cups sugar, 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed 1 cup water • 3 tablespoons lemon juice (DA lemons) 14 cup (6 -oz. can) .quick-frozen concentrated orange juice, thawed ' 2 teaspoons exotic herbs salad 'dressing mix le bottle liquid fruit pectin . • Measure sugars and water into a large saucepan, and mix well. Place over high heat, bring to a full roiling boil, and boil hard 1 minute, stirring constant- ly.d.Stir in fruit juices and salad - dressing mix.. Add liquid ; fruit pectin and mix well. If neces- sa'ry skim offs foam with' metal spoon. Pour quickly;into glasses. Cover glaze at once with 1/s inch hot paraffin, When ready to glaze poultry, stir glaze and spread over ducks. • 4 a n Mandarin oranges have become a popular :Fruit in the canned goods section of our supermark- ets, and they- may be used instead of apricots; prunes, pineapple or Celery salt, and melted butter. fun to have friends drop in. MANDARIN ORANGE BREAD STUFFING 21ee quarts 'soft bread crumbs 1 cup Mandarin orange sections '/s cup orange juice .teaspoon salt •/,r. teaspoon celery salt 3 tablespoons melted butter. Combine bread crumbs, orange sections and juice, salt, celery salt, . and melted butter. Rinse 2 (4'pound) ready -to -cook ducks and pat dry,, Stuff duck lightly and truss. Roast aces,' d- ing to your favourite method. r • During the holiday ;season, ii's fun to have friends drop in These arc the times when it's satisfying to have a full cooky jar ---or even two or three jars, if the crowd grows, Probably there isn't much that is new in the way of cookies, but here's a variation on the traditional shortbread cooky, which is colourful and very good. 0 0 n,, To a cup ('Si pound or 0 ounces) of Nutter add tt cup sifted confectioners' sugar ;aril a teaspoon of vanilla. Blend un - Ill very smooth. Blend in 2 ceps sifted flour thoroughly, then stir in a cup of chapped if. m o n d s and els cup uncooked oats, either quick or .nil-I'a h• toned, (You'll find the dough quite stiff to stir,) Chill dough about an hour, or overnight if you wish. Shape into balls, dip in red or green -coloured sugar and bake on ungreased cooky sheet at 350 degrees F. 15 to 20 minutes. Cool ,a few minutes before removing from,,. cooky sheet. a o- - ,a OLD-FASHIONED SUGAR COOKIES 14 cup lard 1 cup sugar 1 egg 3 cups flour a/4 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder 34 cup milk teaspoon vanilla Blend shortening, sugar and egg. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk and van- illa. Mix thoroughly. Roll dough Vs inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut with flour- ed cutter. Sprinkle with sugar un less you plan to ice the cookies. Bake on greased. cooky sheet 15 minutes at 375 degrees F. Makes 48 cookies. q, * ,. Word has come that raisins, which have been. in 'relatively short supply, are abundant again this year. If you aren't familiar' with this trick it's a useful one to note: if you want raisins extra plump and juicy for mix- ing in a fruit cup, salad, or some special recipe, let them stand in fruit juice for about hall an hour. That will do it. Paid Millions For Forged Art The greatest hoax in the his- tory of art began one day in 1937, when a noted expert iden- tified a dusty painting found in the Paris apartment of a recent- ly deceased businessman as a genuine • painting by the great Dutch artist, Jan Vermeer (1632- 1675). For years afterwards, at some interval of time in each case, another "new Vermeer" would show up. - Only a few experts ever expressed doubts that these were actual works by Vermeer, and museums and collectors were delighted to pay vast sums of money for them, ranging from a .q+tarter of a million dollars to a million and more, One of the nicest things about the hoax, when it was finally uncovered, was the 'fact-' that Many of the persons who were duped were • bigwig Nazi free- booters like Hermann Goering, no nneae imposter in his own way. All sorts of people were in- volved So the great hoax,includ- ing bankers, but it wasn't until 1945 that ]-lana von tvleegerau, Dutch painter whose own works were mediocre, confessed that he had painted all those "long hid• den Verneers." He went to jail in 1947, but nobody could explale how his own paintings could be so poor when he Imitated an authentic lns.4tcr 80 vm11 as to deceive the greatest experts. Travel. Fear TO PaCld Potatoes Have some of your potatoes timed Mack after cooking? if so, it may he because they ha'o'e been too highly hybridized, or interbred. and so 'fall a prey to all sorts of diseases. To remedy • such defects, 'and improve fault y petntees, two scientists, Dr, Ere -meth Dodds, Hong Kong A City Unafraid Hong Kong, the free world's window on Recd China, etches' two overwhelmingly insistent impressions on the newcomer; the beauty of its harbor view and the bursting vitality of its three million citizens, Hong Kong liar- bor's loveliness is Simply breath- taking. It should be savored ,preferably at night from a friend's balcony high on Victoria Peak, with wheeling stars above and the myriad lights of passen- ger ships, junks, sailboats, war- ships, tugs, and ferries reflected in the water: below. In the middle distance, behind Kowloon City, rows of blue lights pinpoint a runway thrusting over 8,000 feet into the sea; in the far distance loom the dark shapes of Tai Mo Shan, over 3,000 feet high, and Ma On Shan, 2,300 feet high, The air is clear and cold on Victoria Peak at this time of year, and one is reminded a bit of a ,New England fall, though of course without the accompanying riot of gold and scarlet foliage. On the peak the homes are Eng- lish in the discreet neatness of their surrounding shrubbery and lawns, But as one descends to lower levels the colorful clangor of the city's Chinese sections' comes into its own, British -built Wolsely buses, painted a bright red, and green double-decker tramcars thread their waythrough streets crammed with trucks, Mercedes Benz taxis, scooters, bicycles, and 'innumerable private cars of all snakes (mostly European), not to mention rickshaws and coolies jogging along with in- credible loads suspended from . their stout bamboo poles. Walking along these bustling streets, dickering with merchants flicking abacus beads with light- ning speed, listening to street vendors' cadenced cries, being jostled by children scampering after some well-heeled tourist, . one cannot help reflecting that here is a city which by every normal yardstick should have be- come extinct long ago. Its quietly efficient British Government seems anomalous in an era in which colonialism is out-of-date; A crown colony, Hong Kong sits right on the doorstep of Com- munist China, whose troops could march in any time they pleased. It lost almost all its traditional trade with China when the Communists took over 10 years ago, and today imports far more from the mainland than it exports to it. It is the most crowded city on earth — . with almost three mil- lion people jammed into little more than 12 square miles. Hong Kong's total area is 391 square miles. But most of this is an uninhabitable and uncultivable director of the John Innes Horti- cultural Institute at Hertford and Dr.' Graham Paxman, a member of his staff, are now making a 10,000 mile journey to the Andes. There, 3,000 feet up on this range's lower slopes in Chile, ,they will study the Golden po- tato, the ancestor, first intro- duced 400 years ago, of many present-day varieties. This Golden potato, still grow- ing wild in its original habitat, is yellow -fleshed. Though small and knobbly, it has a pleasant taste, and never discolours when .cooked, But what commends it to these .research experts is its hardihood. They plan to cross such specimens as they bring back with others strains. The outcome should put new life into' our varieties, and assist them in resisting blight and other diseases. hillside and sweetie, Ties mime, ,area in which the vast major- ity of the population Is cotneen, !rated treasures only 12 square miles.Another 50 square miles is being used for agriculture, write Takashi Oka, in the C1tris- tian Science Monitor: Fully one-third of Hong Kong's population consists of refugees from the Communist mainland — most of them having .fled with nothing but the cotton' shirt and trousers they were wearing. These refugees constitute a stag- gering burden for a territory as small as Hong Kong, with ne natural resources of its own, 1410 handle. London and the United Nations have helped to some exe tent, but most, of the work anti expense of resettling refugee and turning them into productive members of the community ha* been carried out by Hong Kong singiehanded. With all these .discouraging factors to contend with; Hong Kong today shows no signs o going under. Its British Govern- ment and its Chinese citizenry have combined forces to tackle their problems one by one - .. first of all to challenge natures by levelling hills and pushing back the sea, then erecting nevi) factories, housing developments, and office buildings, taking ad.. vantage of Hong Kong's free -port status arpd free -enterprise sys- tem to find new outlets for rests less energies and expanding skills of its citizenry, refugee and long -settled alike. Mountainous , problems, of course, remain, and the starkeg* of them is over -population. There's a limit to Hong Kong') absorptive capacity, and the colony's officials and citizens fee it's time the rest of the world helped solve the refugee prob- lem not by expanded dole but by supplying new homes in nett/ lands for these escapees front Communist oppression, Furthermore, Hong Kong is es strenuous place in which to live. If it is bursting with vigor it le also a fiercelycompetitive city, and for every success story there are hundreds of tragic failures. Yet there is something ex- hilarating about beingin a ci which is pulling itself up _ an in no ,small way - by its o bootstraps. In' a world beset by uncertainties this is one city' which is npt afraid to face the future and go forward to mee4 it with confidence. ISSUE 1 1960 NO FINE KETTLE - Beating .a blip ' dram in Cologne, West Ger- many, this youngster is a'ttenil~ Eng school, The institution boasts the world's youngest orchestra,. es children are taught to play instruments as a kind of mind. cal game, YOU GUESSED IT - What else cool* this animal be at this time of .year bui a Christmas seal? The Seaiquarium in Sall Er ,nciss.o had them on sale at $125 up. Instruction (one tall] for a swimming pool for exercise) are included.