THE PROBLEM OF EATING.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17127, 23 April 1921, Page 4

THE PROBLEM OF EATING.

"We are*faced with the* problem; of keeping hard-working men and women in full health with less money to do.it on and less labour to put into the doing of itj"- says the. "Spectator." "It is taken now "as an'axiom that in tho past •we all ato too much,' but haa that axio* been proved by the war?* Are the civil populations the better even for the' very moderate amount of abstinence which those,years forced upon them? . ' " "That we 'eat too much' was not the opinion of the very wise men who provisioned the army which won the war. -''Brain workers are, we are sure, at the present moment in danger of eating and sleepinir too. little. The public thought of a plan by which it could get more sunshine out of,the day than it had grown accustomed to. We ought now to think of one by which the brain workers can get more food, more sleep and more leisure.

"The richer middle class in approaching more and more to the poorer in standard of life, and already the evening meal is becoming a slighter affair; Vast crowds of young men and women dine at restaurants near,to their work, and content themselves with a hght supper at home when it is over. They do not cat .n heavy meal at noon, because they cannot work after it, nor at 8 o'clock because they cannot get J it; and they take little or no alcohol at I either because they cannot -afford it. The result is that most of the brain | workers do not eat more than about two-thirds of what their fathers ate, and one wonders what will be the result of the change. "Possibly we may see a revulsion to a stall earlier custom. We may imitate the "meal times which still prevail upon the Continent. The English 'good breakfast' may be given up, and we may snatch a roll and a cup of coffee \ in the early morning, and ait down to a square meal at 11 or 12. However good our appetites, we should not become so sleepy at that hour as we should at 3 or 4 o'clock,' and the children might as well eat then as later if the schools would shift their time tables a little. Tea at 4 and a non-meat meal at 8 would possibly then us, and certainly the work of the household, which just_now falls so hardly upon the unaccustomed women of what we used to call the servant-keeping class, Would be infinitely lightened. "The difficulty is that no custom, seems able to be changed in this coontry under about a hundred years unless Eome expedient can be thought of to enforce it without an. appearance of tyranny. It is hot . enough tha.t a change should be generally desired. No alteration of clocks can help us here."