Letter: Plague of obesity can be combatted with nutritional guidelines

The nutritional deficiency diseases that plagued us in the past — beriberi, pellagra, rickets, scurvy, goiter and cretinism — have been brought to a low incidence by medicating populations rather than individuals by enrichment of flour with vitamins and by adding iodine to salt.

We have a new plague to contend with, obesity. Its effects are quite tolerable when you are young, but it tends to force retirement at an earlier age and dishearten, incapacitate, immobilize and generate misery in your old age — all at cost to you, your family, the community and the nation. We could fight it with law limiting the sugar content of candy, soft drinks and sweet foods.

Volney Wallace

Murray