BRITAIN is fast becoming a nation of hypochondriacs. All politicians, newspapers and TV pundits can talk about is the NHS and the waiting times.

I can go back over 70-odd years when we did not have a Health Service. I do not recall anyone complaining about waiting time or having to make an appointment to see a doctor.

At the end of the Second World War, people were far healthier and fitter than today. Why? Because, like Helen Mead (LET, April 23) we did not eat foreign food.

The vegetables we ate were grown in this country and had not travelled halfway around the world.

I wonder how Mrs Mead or Auntie Flo would react if they were asked to make a nourishing soup from codfish heads? I have no doubt of what they would say -- because of what Lord Woolton, the Minister for Food during the last war, was told to do with his fish heads.

LESLIE JONES, Aviemore Close, Audley, Blackburn.