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Caribbean Diet
The scientific invasion of the tropics is not only grappling with disease but is revealing and exploring other major scientific problems, one of the chief of which is diet. Nutrition is a comparatively new field of research, for the analysis of regional diets and their influence on health and efficiency perforce awaited the development of biochemistry. Scientists, however, have now grasped the importance of the question.
In recent years the biochemistry of nutrition has made considerable progress. Knowledge of the subject grew with the chemical analysis of foods and made rapid progress with the discovery of the essential vitamins. It is not believed that all primitive peoples who have survived have succeeded in balancing their diet. McCollum and others hold, for example, that many meat-eating races have done this by consuming the protective glandular organs. The Chinese peasant, again, has obtained a balanced diet of rice and green vegetables despite the absence of milk.
The Mexican peasant has balanced his high intake of protein in corn and beans by drinking pulque, a liquor intoxicating but rich in vitamins.
It is obvious that this question of a balanced diet is of fundamental importance to white settlement in the tropics.As regards the geography of diet, McCollum and Simmonds consider that successful human dietaries are found in three types of geographical environment, two of which include parts of the tropics. They write: In the warmest regions of the world, which are also characterized in general by excess of wetness, live the rice-eating peoples. Their diet is in the main vegetarian and consists of rice as the principal cereal, with additions of soy beans, various tubers and root vegetables, and large amounts of leafy vegetables of many kinds...
The leaf of the plant is superior to the seed, tuber, root or fruit in its dietary properties. In fact, the edible leaf is in itself complete from the standpoint of its dietary principles... The importance of the leafy type of vegetable in the diet of the rice-eating peoples cannot be overestimated. Because of the density of population, milk-producing animals are not kept in the rice-eating regions... [The] only food of animal origin is eggs, poultry and pork,... but in some places considerable amounts of fish are available. People on such a dietary regimen, are very successful in their physical development and compare... with the best specimens of the human race.
We may note how seldom this diet is adopted by the white man who colonizes the hot, wet tropics. Another successful type of diet is found in the hot, dry tropics, where the inhabitants subsist through the conversion of pasturage into human food through the agency of flocks and herds. Here the only article fit for abundant human consumption is milk, which is usually sour. Yet upon this diet, supplemented by small amounts of such foodstuffs as barley, bread, dates, and meat, the peoples of the hot, dry tropics "maintain surprising vitality." In tropical pasturing countries like northern Australia the few white settlers probably approach this pastoral diet more nearly than the whites of the hot, wet tropics approach the native vegetarian diet of those regions.
The shortest residence in a tropical country and the briefest examination of tropical literature bring home to the student the importance of diet. Ellsworth Huntington puts the matter from a pessimistic point of view in supporting the thesis that "the less stimulating the climate, the less favorable is its type of diet." We cannot, perhaps, go so far as to accept in full Huntington's generalization but we can agree that much of the so-called tropical degeneracy is due to the primary factor of climate creating an unfavorable secondary control in poor nutrition.
Whether in all cases the climatic factor is more important than the dietetic is by no means certain. For example, McCollum, unlike Huntington, believes that the American loyalists who went to the Bahama Islands declined not through the climate but through poor diet. The difficulties surrounding tropical diets are evident in the regions we have surveyed. 8 In the warm-temperate and tropical areas of what is now the southeastern United States the white colonists evolved a shocking diet. Pork, or bacon, with bitter coffee, became the staples. The cooking was appalling, and digestions were ruined by the British cultural inheritance of distilled liquors, which were wholly inapplicable in an almost tropical summer climate.
Fortunately, over much of the South the diet has improved greatly. Vance, for example, states that the trucking areas enjoy a healthful varied diet. In Florida, where the southern regions possess a moderate tropical climate, the trucking areas enjoy such a diet even during the off seasons. From October until June most rural people eat citrus fruits, as nearly every home possesses fruit trees. From December until June or July there is an abundance of one or more vegetables. Education, too, is assisting matters. Food habits are being reformed under persuasion and demonstration, and demonstration clubs of farmers' wives are bringing about improvements. It is significant that many workers in the field believe that adequate diet is not so much a matter of economic class as of the mother's training.
Nevertheless, the situation in many parts of the South is far from satisfactory. The basic diet of pork, fats, starches, and sweets still reigns supreme in the cotton and tobacco belts. Corn is the mainstay in the mountains, and the southeast coast is generally lacking in milk. Thus the representative Southern dietaries deviate from the best standards of nutrition more than other sections of the United States. The deficiency disease of pellagra appears to be one of many evils resulting from these bad adjustments of diet. Discovered in 1907-1908, its "universal recognition made it seem like the outbreak of an epidemic." Unfortunately, as in the case of hookworm, the South has bitterly resented publicity in this respect.
Where the peoples of hot countries are relatively inefficient, diet causes much of the inefficiency. We saw from Chapter III how appalling was the diet adopted by various white communities in the Caribbean. Even today in islands such as Puerto Rico the low standard of the great mass of the population is largely caused by malnutrition and undernutrition. This is due partly to the fact that a large part of the rural population is said to be living on the verge of starvation and partly to the growth of a poor diet of imported foods following upon the development of the one-crop sugar industry. This problem of malnutrition demands close regional study, for it is desperately urgent both in the West Indies and in other tropical lands. We were much impressed by the diversified crops and higher standards in Jamaica as compared with certain other islands of the Caribbean.
It is also clear that poverty and a low standard of living render the people more prone to the ravages of diseases such as hookworm and malaria. Doctors of the United Fruit Company, for example, maintain that a high standard of living is almost as important as medicine and sanitation in dealing with tropical disease. There is also the question of seasonal variations in the living standard, and there are intermittent calamities such as hurricanes and swarms of locusts. These terrible visitations destroy crops and greatly affect health in the islands of the West Indies. Education in dietetics is also essential. Saban people who have lived in the United States appreciate the value of milk, fruit, and green vegetables, but the majority of the white population suffers greatly from dyspepsia, owing to a diet of biscuits, bread, and tea. In many West Indian islands the schools might well teach elementary knowledge of diet and hygiene. Under the guidance of doctors of the Rockefeller Foundation, Jamaican educationists are conducting a splendid dietetic campaign.
Another method of attacking the problem lies with the employers, particularly those who are in charge of one-crop industries. Where the land of native populations has been absorbed in great plantations, it is essential that the laborers should receive workers' blocks for home gardens and should be educated and encouraged to use this land for the betterment of their nutrition. This is the policy of such organizations as the United Fruit Company and is very different from that of some of the rubber companies that operated in South America during the boom days. The latter often enforced the rule that workers should buy all their food from them, and supplied a diet "almost invariably of the dried variety, with perhaps a few cans of salmon or sardines thrown in."
In Hawaii, too, the large sugar and pineapple plantations find their efficiency greatly improved by attention to diet. From his journeys in the Amazon basin, Earl Hanson throws some extremely illuminating light on the diet problem. On the Orinoco River, above the Maipure Rapids, the white survivors of the rubber boom have been forced to support themselves by farming, hunting, and fishing. "They grumble about their isolation," says Hanson, "but put a certain amount of gusto into their grumbling. They seem comparatively healthy, do a great deal of laughing and joking, and are on the whole much more lively than any similar group I found anywhere else on the jungle rivers and away from the cities." On crossing the Brazilian border, Hanson expected to find that the Brazilians would consider themselves much better off than their Venezuelan neighbors. Instead of that "they did little but whine about their hard lot and about the unhealthfulness of the Rio Negro." The reason appeared to be that these whites were able to ship rubber and other products to Manaos and to import foodstuffs. "The result was obviously malnutrition."
Continuing his observations on the South American tropics, Hanson notes that the Salesian fathers on the Rio Negro and the Benedictines on the Rio Branco plant and eat fresh vegetables. The Englishmen of Manaos buy and eat fresh meat and vegetables. In eastern Bolivia, near the mouth of the Beni River, the Bolivians and Swiss, who make Cachuela Esperanza and Riberalta such delightful places, buy a steady supply of fresh vegetables from the Japanese colonists, who are not prevented from working because of racial pride. The healthy cattle ranchers on Marajo Island live on a well-balanced diet-of vegetables, meat, milk, and cheese.
Hanson regards the Salesian fathers at Barcellos and São Gabriel as of particular interest in relation to tropical problems. A number are Europeans--Austrians and Spaniards--and they have been years in the tropics. They have generally suffered from every illness the region affords. Yet they are distinguishable from the rest of the whites in that they have maintained their mental alertness and carry out an amount of hard, physical labor that would be remarkable even in the temperate zone. Undoubtedly one reason for this is the fact that they plant gardens and so obtain fresh foods.We did hear some complaints that canned foods were too common and that milk was scarce, but we found that milk and a splendid variety of fruit and fresh vegetables were offered in the restaurants at comparatively moderate rates. Unfortunately, Panama is an economic freak, and the white colony enjoys a high living standard for the tropics and a diet of a kind only available on one of the greatest highways of the world.
Turning to the vast region of the Australian tropics, one enters a zone marked by a variety of diet. In the past the scattered pastoralists of the outback stations perforce relied on cattle products. The camel trains frequently came up at intervals as great as six months, and for months the whites were compelled to subsist on weevily flour. Modern transport has improved matters, but the white ant remains a constant menace to vegetables. In such coastal towns as Darwin the difficulty of obtaining milk is serious, while the supply of vegetables has been curtailed since the "White Australia" policy reduced the number of Chinese gardeners. Also the bad old English food traditions prevail: the hotels, for example, serve the heavy meals of temperate Australia and of Britain.
Alcohol is an unmitigated curse throughout the tropics. The student of white settlement in the tropics may have no teetotal leanings or sympathies, but he cannot stay for any length of time in almost any tropical region without seeing grave alcoholic excesses and hearing from trustworthy authorities that the abuse of alcohol is a menace. In this respect there seems little to choose between the English, Australians, Americans, or Dutch, for large quantities of liquor are everywhere in evidence. All leading medical authorities agree that alcohol should be avoided in the tropics.Yet it is very seldom that the whites realize the importance of this. In every British station one hears both settlers and sojourners put forward the old fallacious theory that whisky is essential to the health of the white man in the tropics. In many parts of the tropics matters have improved since the days of heavy and chronic drinking mentioned in The dictum of the Rice expedition does not apply to the Amazon basin only. "If we selected the one disease of the region to which the greatest degree of physical degeneration is due and which indirectly furnishes the underlying cause of many infections, it is alcoholism."
It is easy to discover the reasons for alcoholism among white people of the tropics. The heat demands the frequent imbibing of liquids. Under the humidity and monotony both sexes feel that they require some stimulus.
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