On This Day, 27 June 1917

Birmingham Mail

Wednesday 27 June 1917

SUGGESTED FOODLESS DAY.

“A RIDICULOUS PROPOSAL”

Speaking yesterday at the National Welfare and Food Exhibition, Lady Rhondda, wife of the Food Controller, said she would like to see people not engaged in work bind themselves to set apart one day in each week when they would eat nothing. Her ladyship invited any who would be so self-denying in their country’s interest to communicate with her.

Dr. Robertson, Medical Officer of Heath for the City of Birmingham, interviewed today by a “Mail” reporter, said such self-denial might be all right for people who lay in bed all day, but it was a ridiculous proposal so far as people engaged in work were concerned. The average physique could not stand it, and taking the question as a whole, independent of individual or exceptional cases, a foodless day would, in his opinion, be detrimental to the health of the people and render them unfit for the work they had in hand or any serious physical or mental effort.