292 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Frank Lidgett McDougall in January 1935 called The Agricultural and the
Health Problems in which the author suggested that improved efficiency in
agricultural production and a reduction in tariffs, through making protec-
tive foods, that is, foods rich in vitamins, cheaper and therefore more acces-
sible to the larger sections of the population, would assist in addressing
(alongside education programs, wealth redistribution and social relief), the
health and other problems that result from poor nutrition.^176
McDougall was an economic advisor to the Australian High
Commission in London and in that role he served as an advisor to the
Australian delegation to the LON between 1928 and 1940. McDougall
also advised the Australian delegation to the 1933 World Monetary and
Economic Conference which agreed on little else but a drastic restriction of
production. The thinking behind this policy restricting production was as
follows: ‘create scarcity and wait for prices to rise.’^177 Towards the close of
this conference Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a former Australian prime minis-
ter and the leader of the Australian delegation to the conference, declared
‘that since [the] conference...only agreed on the desirability of the restric-
tion of production in a poverty stricken world, the inevitable consequence
must be greatly to strengthen the forces of fascism and communism.’^178
Aykroyd, who had been working at the Health Section since 1931,
later observed that the conference’s ‘one concrete proposal...ran coun-
ter to the findings of the new science of nutrition which, emerging from
the laboratory, demonstrated that good health depends on good diet....
From the standpoint of nutrition, the main trouble was not the over-
production of food, but underconsumption.’^179 McDougall, who was
also dismayed by the advocacy of ‘restriction policies to control plenty
(^176) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 164–66, and John B. O’Brien, ‘F. L. McDougall and the
Origins of the FAO,’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 46, no. 2 (2000): 164–74,
- John B. O’Brien points out that The Agricultural and the Health Problems ’drew on
the work of Dr. Hazel Stibling of the United States Health Department of Agriculture, Dr.
Rajchmann [Ludwik Rajchmann], director of the health section of the League of Nations,
Dr. Burnet and Dr. Aykroyd in Australia and most important of all, on his colleague from
the Empire Marketing Board John Boyd Orr of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen and
author of the book Food, Health and Income [1936].’ O’Brien, ‘F. L. McDougall and the
Origins of the FAO,’ 169-70.
(^177) Wallace Ruddell Ackroyd, 1968, quoted in R. Passmore, ‘Obituary Notice: Wallace
Ruddell Aykroyd,’ British Journal of Nutrition 43, no. 2 (1980): 245–50, 246.
(^178) F. L. McDougall, 1951, quoted in O’Brien, ‘F.L. McDougall and the Origins of the
FAO,’ 167. See also Passmore, ‘Obituary Notice: Wallace Ruddell Aykroyd,’ 246.
(^179) Passmore, ‘Obituary Notice: Wallace Ruddell Aykroyd,’ 246.