Food In Its Place

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 89, 7 March 1941, Page 4

Food In Its Place

N a recent issue of the "Manchester Guardian" a correspondent suggested that one of the good things the war had done was to put food in its place. Most people will feel that it has done the very opposite of that. It has put food in the wrong place, namely into everybody’s head and heart. When meals are as reasonable a certainty as day and night and the succession of the seasons we can afford to forget them. But we think a little anxiously about pleasures that we may at any time lose. It is of course true that some people think of food almost without ceasing. So do some of drink, and some of other indulgences. But they are not healthy people. Health is the absence rather than the presence of obsessions of all kinds-especially of such an unnecessary obsession, in normal times, as the arrival of the next meal. And even in wartime we face nothing worse in New Zealand, and in fact in any British country, than the temporary disappearance of something to which we have been accustomed. We run no risk of starvation, or even of prolonged hunger. The present ration in England, for example, after the submarines have done their worst, is bread ad lib., fats 12 ounces a week, sugar 8 ounces, meat 32 ounces, bacon and ham 4 ounces, tea, coffee and cocoa to the limit of our pockets. That means hardship for gluttons only. Food can, however, get on people’s brains without touching their hearts, but in that case its victims are women only. In spite of the example of Mary and Martha, most women insist on cumbering themselves with "much serving," but even in their case the war should not mean complications. Since most of their worrying is brought about by embarrassment of riches, their problem should be eased when their choice is narrowed down from a multitude of possibilities to two or three. And as for the men in such homes, a healthy man forgets his food when he is working, but responds as automatically to a rattle of dishes as troop-horses when the trumpets call "Feed!"