WHAT THE WORLD EATS.

Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 63

WHAT THE WORLD EATS.

By Winifred Legarde. “ Hippo foot in aspic, please.” “les, sir. Shan’t keep you a moment. Sure you wouldn’t like a nice wallaby cutlet? Or shark’s back au gratin?” No, this is not nonsense. It is merely a conversation which may well take place in any restaurant fifty years from now. That is to say, if one Dr Frederick Cook gets his way. Our beef supplies are diminishing at an appalling rate, and Dr Cook is in favour of breeding vast herds of hippo for the feeding of future generations. Wallaby and shark are also said to be good eating, while whale and reindeer are not be neglected as potential food for the world.

As it is we are well content. Science has been good to us. It has evolved foods which combine nourishment and delicacy; two factors which are not always co-existent. If we are hungry, we let science alone and eat roast beef and tw’o vegetables. If we are tired, science steps in and, without compelling recourse to alcohol, gives us the world’s finest pick-me-up in the form of a beverage which comprises malt and milk and eggs in one aromatic whole.

However, there is a gentleman in India who eats gold whenever he feels run down. This is one Gobar, a Hindu wrestler, who has a firm belief in the curative and recuperative power of gold. It is said that his famous diet of gold leaf and honey has to be tasted to be believed. Further, it must be inferred that Mr Gobar makes considerably more at wrestling than our menfolk do at stockbroking, and I feel that there is little possibility of gold diet becoming universal. Nevertheless, the world eats queer things. I Sometimes it is from choice, sometimes I from necessity when there is nothing else. For example, during the periodic famines in China, the populace will live for months on turnip tops and leaves, alternating this diet occasionally with bark from trees, wild grasses, and chaff. They have even been known to eat soil in the belief that it is of the edible variety, but such pioneers have invariably perished. Earth, however, is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. In Java 1 the peasants make biscuits from a par-

ticular kind of oily clay found in the neighbourhood, and very tasty they are said to be. Certain of the Maoris eat earth as found in the neighbourhood of the hot springs in the north of New Zealand, while the famous earth eaters of the Orinoco subsist on practically nothing else. They cat between one and two pounds of raw clay per day, and never get indigestion. Whale meat is extensively eaten in Japan, and shark’s fins, and soup made from the glutinous nests of the little sea swallow I need not mention, for they are well known already. A year or two ago it was discovered that a large percentage of the civilised w’orld had been taking into their systems a considerable amount of plaster of paris. This was due to the bakers, who discovered that by judicious mixing of plaster of paris and flour, a bread of snowy whiteness could be obtained. By good fortune this plan was discovered and our digestions remained unimpaired. Silver is considered to be medicinal in some parts of India, and many dishes are garnished with fine strips of silver leaf. Then there is the case of the people of the besieged city of Haarlem, who for weeks lived upon shoe leather and nettles.