LESS FOOD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 51, 22 February 1944, Page 2

LESS FOOD

BETTER HEALTH

>In Great Britain a surprising thing has happened, stated Dr. Geoffrey Browne recently discussing Britain's food rationing in "London Calling." Vn the nx.dst of this world shortage and of a war, the health of the British people has never been better. It is; due »o the most remarkable piece ol scentific planning and organisation which has. been seen in this war. 1 refer, of course, to the work of the Ministry of Food. The Ministry has placed everybody on limited rations—lit has cut out all .luxury foods and even many foods which might have be cm thought esential for health. Butter except for a small weekly ration, has gone; fruit, except for a short summer season of plums and apples, has gone, too ■ fish is. in short supply, eggs are a rarity, milk is rationed to two pints a week in winter. There is no cream and there is barely a pound of meat a week each. There is very little of other foods available, ihe diet is plain. As an Australian brought up on a chop and two eggs for breakfast and meat for the other two meals, "plain" is scarcely the term I personally should use to describe it. Yet Ii am as well as 1; have ever been. 1 have a little boy who was born three weeks before the outbreak of war and who so far lias lived all his life on the British wartime diet. I could not have expected him to be better physically if he had been brought up in the sunshine and pre-war plenty of Australia,.

Mill lions of people in this country are in fact living o.n better food, speaking from a nutritional point of view, than they have ever lived on before. For this they have to thank first those countries, including New Zealand, and Australia, Canada and the United States, who have continued to send them food at all costs secondly the seamen who - have brought them here, and thirdly Lord Woolton and the Ministry of Food, and the farmers who have increased home production. One of Lord Woolton's most important steps was to keep the price of the key foods down to a level at which' everybody in the country could, afford to buy as much as he is allowed. These key foods included most of the dietary essentials necessary for good health.