BACON A LUXURY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 3, 10 March 1947, Page 8

BACON A LUXURY

BREAKFASTS FOR BRITAIN MARMALADE MAY RETURN The old-fashioned English breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade is likely to remain a rare luxury rather than a comfortable start for the day’s work as in prewar times, according to the latest surveys of Great Britain’s food prospects for 1947.

There may be a little more fat to put on the toast, but there is a probability there will be fewer slices on which it spread it, it has been disclosed by debate in the House of Lords.

Scotsmen and others who like proridge have to forfeit eight points for a pound—when they can get it. And there is virtually “no hope” of increasing the bacon ration from two to three rashers a week. Lord Henderson, speaking for the Government, told the Lords there might even be difficulty in maintaining the present weekly two-ounce ration—enough for one average portion. In regard to eggs to serve with the bacon, Lord Henderson used diplomatic language, “There is a good chance that the eggs distributed will not be fewer than last year,” he said.

By this he meant the old-fashion-ed variety of eggs—those sold in their shells. In regard to the more plentiful dried eggs in tin cans,! he said supplies would “almost certainly” be maintained. v

For those tenacious Britons who have not given up the idea of having hot-cooked breakfast by the spring of 1947, however, Lord Henderson held out hope that there would be plentiful catches of fish. Lest his hearers get too optimistic, he hastened to add that these would be so great as to be an “embarrassment.” He was probably referring to the diffculty of transporting supplies from the fishing ports to breakfast tables. To those who have adopted a breakfast of toast and marmalade, and they are in the majority nowadays, Eood Minister John Strachey brings hope of getting marmalade once more with the pleasing tang of Seville oranges.

The prospect of better marmalade could scarcely offset Mr Strachey’s other pronouncement: Reduction in the weekly allocation of fresh meat. Lord Woolton, Britain’s popular Conservative wartime Food Minister, has come forward with his first criticism of the Government’s food policy since he left the Ministry. An extra pound of meat under a miner’s belt, he said, would produce more coal than “arid contemplation” of the fact that he is now a part owner of the country’s coal mines.