NOT GETTING ENOUGH TO EAT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 13, 2 April 1947, Page 3

NOT GETTING ENOUGH TO EAT

OLD PEOPLE IN ENGLAND Old people are not getting enough to eat, is the opinion of Lord Amulree, Medical Officer to the British Ministry of Health. Presiding at a conference of the London Council of Social Services to discuss special catering for the aged and infirm, Lord Amulree said he had been told that old people did not need big meals. The idea was that a little food, at frequent intervals throughout the day, was best for them. “I have a fair number of relatives who are approaching 80,” continued Lord Amulree. “They seem to me to eat four enormous meals every day. They eat much more than I could, and they are also very pleased to have a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning.” On the point of whether alcoholic drinks were good for old people, he said he had noticed amongst his own friends and relatives that old people found a glass of sherry and a piece of cake very helpful during the morning. Lord Amulree thought it was an advantage for old people living in hostels and homes to take one or two meals communally; not at long tables in an unpleasantly decorated room, and if they were at school, but in a pleasant room at small tables, as though they were in a hotel. Miss M. Matthews (London) considered it a deprivation for old people in institutions not to be allowed to pour out their own tea.

“I should be very unhappy,” she declared, “if I knew that for the rest of my life I was never again going to be allowed to pour out my own tea just as I like it. This is a social problem.” Dr. F. Avery Jones, of the Central Middlesex Hospital, said many aged people came to hospital because their domestic situation had become impossible. Old people living alone did not always eat enough; they lost energy and the inclination to queue for food. „