THE DIET DIFFICULTY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 9 May 1925, Page 9

THE DIET DIFFICULTY

THEORIES AND FACTS (By Hilda Keane, in N.Z. Herald.) There have always been theories of dieting; there have always been reasons why some individuals are long-lived. Out of them aIL there emerges the one simple and ever-accepted theory—that simplicity, as opposed t.o poverty or to richness of food is the safe rule for mankind. Addressing a certain club in London, Dr Josiah Oldfield stated “Give me tho (fitting of the race anj they will soon live to be a hundred. The ideal diet is porridge, fish, cheese, milk, buttermilk, eggs, oil, salads, fresh vegetables and onions, dried fruits. If the poorer classes would slum cheap meat and tea they would have.an even better chance of longevity.” Every circular issued to school children by our Health Department emphasises the need for wholemeal bread, butter (not jam), milk and cocoa (not tea), cheese, fresh fruit, etc. Every time we have an epidemic it is suggested to the public that white flour and excess of sugar are bad foods. During the recent scourge of infantile paralysis it was inferred that children from the poorer homes were less susceptible, to the disease than were those of more moneyed families. These theories and facts can bear a little analysis from the point of view of an Auckland mother. There are hundreds of Auckland women endeavouring to- rear their children in accordance with the approved methods of the day. Let us summarise their experience. THE CHILD’S FOOD A cliild is, lot us sav, fed from birth according to Blanket, methods. The very first stumbling block for the mother is the milk supply. How many Auckland mothers get for their children pure, fresh, unadulterated, unpasteurised, unpreservatised milk? Do they get today’s milk, cleanly milked, free from suspicion of bovine tuberculosis? Or do they have to scald what is already pasteurised or preservatised ? There is the first trouble. As for buttermilk, it may be procurable. Who has seen it advertised, or knows where it is sold? What children from a well-fed community could be induced to drink it? I am inclined to think that its use is among peasant peoples, or that it is an acquired dietetic habit. In parenthesis, it is well to remind people of the Bulgarian Bug craze. People averred that they liked it. that, they were so much benefited by it, etc. Where is it. to-dav? Apparently it has gone back to Bulgaria or wherever it came froi ’.

No; wc have too great a choice of foods for our people to seriouslv include buttermilk or soured milk. Mothers know all about, sour milk cheeses, sour cream for fruits, etc., but- they realise how useless it is to-day, to put these things on their tables. Wc. wax fat an ( ] kick.

“Cheese, is a. perfect substitute, for meat.” Cheese was perhaps an ideal food when people ale their crusts of wholemeal bread and drank tankards of hop-and-grain-mnde ale —vegetable and grain extract, and ample liquid to balance the nolrogenous properties of the cheese. Mothers to-day know very well that if they give _ children much cheese, a course of aperients has to follow. Besides this, we now buy cheese by the pound, or less. . The shopman handles it every time fie cuts and weighs it. Wore the man’s hands, washed ? Exit cheese. BORIC ACID IN BUTTER Now take butter —a beautiful and satisfying food, as made in New Zealand. The mother has thought, “Well, I am alright if I stick to bread and butter.” “Don’t grudge the butter- —it is a pure, concentrated food,” advises father. So, though tho price jumps up and down the scale, mostly up. with most annoying persistence, the poor man buys her three and four pounds a, week of butter, and spreads it liberally. And the most disquieting thing of all happens. She reads on the package: “This butter contains not less than 52 grains of boric t!C id to the pound.” 'Twenty-four grains one pennyweight, twenty pennyweights one ounce—that is how the table went? A child eats, say, a pound of butter in a. week ; that should nbTT be too liberal an allowance in a simple food dietary. Ilow many grains of boric acid lias he had to add on to the preservative in the milk he drinks? Boric acid is not permissible in the United States butter. Wy must New Zealand tolerate is This defect in our butter is the most serious matter to an earnest, mother. Say that she prefers fish to meat for her children. Fish is still expensive. We often pay a shilling <y pound (bones included) for fish. It is not too easily obtainable even yet-; it, is seldom delivered, certainly not daily to the ordinary home. If tho family live in the outer suburbs, it is probably quite unprocurable. \ DEAR FRUIT Fruit is very expensive for family use. Apples are seldom under 4d a pound, and four apples may go to the pound. If meat is discarded, the quantity of fruit required is certainly more than an apple a. day. Even at the meagre one each for a family of six. 3s 6d a week make apples a luxury rather than a recognised food. Oranges are often 3d each. As a matter of fact, it is cheaper to feed children with dried lruits imported from Australia or America or South Africa (which exports excellent dried peaches) than to attempt our own New Zealand fruits. Curious, this, is it not? Salads arc liked, but are usually reserved for Sunday’s cold meat lunch or tea. Lettuce are averagely 3d a-piece ; and there is dressing to provide. New Zealanders have not acquired the taste for oil —a much more nutritious dressing, when the oil is not of the nauseous cotton-seed variety, than that curious mixture of salt, sugar, vinegar, nulk, with perhaps an egg, that our housewives favour. But oil is expensive. THE WHOLEMEAL LOAF

Then wo como to bread. r J ho simple facts about wholemeal bread are these : —lt is irregular in weight, perhaps it comes under the category of “fancy” ; it is seldom, if ever, made without an admixture of white flour; it is easily confused with brown bread, which appears to be white bread plus a handful of coarse bran. The wise mother acLusloms her children to wholemeal by never having white, bread in the house; that, is the only way. .Even, them, the baker occasionally sins; and certainly the mother cannot get extra loaves of wholemeal if she needs them ; the linkers make just the minimum quantity for regular orders. The moment the children meal clsewluy'e they find white bread. No cakes* are .made of wholemeal : it is slow in rising, and not so dainty. A mother needs great persistence to maintain the. wholemeal habit. Not. until t he. State makes it. dtnupulsory to mill only wholemeal flour for bread will it. become a. universal food ; the white Hour habit is too deeply engrained in our generation. If the more moneyed class has the greater proportion of infantile paralysis', if it. possibly because their children can and do get. abundance of fanev fine porridge, abundance of milk with its preservatives and its pasteurised devita.lisation. white bread, cake, and abundance of butter, so fully impregnated with “boric” acid? believe, mo. mothers who Irv In observe the health dictates am harassed and worried 1o the full. NVi wonder most of them give up the unequal battle __ _ _____