Random Reflections

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 371, 27 February 1937, Page 3

Random Reflections

By

“JOPPA.”

There is a row on in Auckland about the bread supplied to the Public Hospital. One member of the board asserted that at times the bread was not fit for human consumption, A few years ago this statement might have been serious, but these days nearly everyone has become a food faddist with peculiar ideas as to what we should eat, so that really such an assertion does not amount to much. Maybe he believes only in whole meal, and if so the pearliest white bread will meet with his condemnation. I have been offered bread, made according to expert recipe from whole meals, which looked to me like a dirty, sodden, suet pudding and urged to devour it as the only truly worthy form of bread, and in spite of all the assurances as to vitamin content and whait not, I declined. From my point of view, controlled, I admit by aesthetic considerations, this supreme expression of scientific breadmaking resulted in a product unfit at any rate for my consumption and I have been offered salads of cabbage, carrots, nuts and other extras by food experts that could only arouse in me the feelings of the old Scot who, when, on a visit to London, he was offered some mustard and cress, indignantly snorted, “Wumman, dae ye think I’ve come a’ this way frae Scotland just to learn to eat grass like a coo?” And the thought of that Scot of course brings us to porridge. A medical man in Wanganui, who is regarded by many as the supreme oracle on food, has asserted that porridge is not a good diet! What are we coming to, brither Scots? I was brought up on “them”—for no true Scot speaks of that sacred food in

the singular. It is “your parritches.” And without sugar! At leait my father thought so, but vUe boys discovered that if sugar may not be placed on the top of porridge at (table, it could be placed in the plate first, before the porridge was poured in, in the kitchen. My father was pleased that he had trained his children in the good old way; we children were quite easy, and the good mother, as so often in such cases, preserved a benevolent neutrality, regarding us all as her bairns, both husband and youngsters, to be humoured as not possessing much sente. And while v.'e are on Scotch food, think of haggis. Yes, think of it! I do around burns Nicht, but I don’t eat it. The Immortal Bard may rhapsodise about “the great chieftain o’ the puddin race” but —well, the other chap can have it. And what about snails, and bird-nest eoup, and shark’s fin each

amid its ov.’n votaries regarded as a delicacy. Really what, is l fit for

human consumption?

It is hard to know in these days of vegetarians, whole-mealers, raw saladists; nut-chewers and everly kind of dietetic expert. However, we can all agree that we must not overeat. If so we are gluttons. But v'hy not also settle definitely we must not over-drink? A. A. Milne talks some horse-sense on this 1 business' of overdrinking. “For some reason overeating is considered the mark of the beast, but over-drinking the mark of rather.a fine fellow. The two internperences may be equally blameworthy, but they are not equally offensive. After a fifth helping of rice pudding one does not become over-fami'liar with strangers, nor doet an extra slice of ham inspire a man to beat his Wife-

After five pints of beer (or 15, or 50) a man will “go anywhere in reason, but he won’t go home; after five helpings of rice pudding, I imagine, home would seem the one desired haven. The poets and other gentlemen who have written so much romantic nonsense about “good red wine” and “good brown ale” are responsible for this. I admit that a glass of Burgundy is a more beautiful thing than a blanc mange, but 1 do not think that it follovds that a surfeit of one i& more heroic than a surfeit of the other. There may be a divinity in the grape that excuses excess, but if so , one would expect it to be there even before the grape had been trodden on by someone else. Yet no poet ever hymned the man who bucked into the dessert, or told him that he was by way of becoming a jolly good fellow, he is only by way of becoming a pig. . . . “The beaded bubbles winking at the brim” —this might also have been sung of a tapioca pudding, in -which case a couple of tapioca puddings Would certainly qualify the recipient as one of the boys. If only the poets had praised over-eating rather than over-drink-ing, how much safer the streets and highways would be in these days of motor driving.” But after all why worry so much as to what you eat? Many of us were brought up on the Spartan rule of being made to eat what our mother gave us With the grim reminder, “Well, my lad, you’ll eat it, before it will eat you,” and so we go on through life, “eating what is set before us, asking no question for conscience sake.” We survive in good health, and fair happiness and save both ourselves and others a lot of fussing.