WHY BRITAIN WANTS OUR CHEESE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 112, 15 August 1941, Page 14

WHY BRITAIN WANTS OUR CHEESE

iC Written for "The Listener" by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the Department of Health)

HE radio is at present appealing for workers to help make more cheese for export. It may occur to you that it is strange that Britain will take as much cheese as we can send, If we look into the composition of cheese we may see why, and at the same time we may see why it would be better if we became accustomed to eating more cheese ourselves; for the average intake for New Zealand per head is only

one-third of an ounce, whereas it can be calculated that we should be consuming more like double that quantity. Well, there’s the first point-Britain has the habit of eating cheese regularly, whereas we have not. There is not the smallest restaurant in Britain but supplies bread and cheese for lunch if one wants it. By contrast, it is not easy to get it here, in this pastoral country, the more’s the pity! The New Zealand pioneers brought their habits with them, but we have lost the cheese-eating habit. Grandmother's Cheese My grandmother used to make her own cheese-there were no cheese-fac-tories when the Philip Laing arrived in 1848! An old relative of 90 gave me this description the other day as to how she did it. She put the warmed milk into a vat with some rennet, and let it curdle. Then she cut up the curd, and strained it through a cloth, putting pressure on to squeeze out the whey. After adding salt, the mass was mixed by hand. Then it was pressed and set on a shelf to ripen-and often to win a prize at the show! It occurred to me, that if Britain

wants our cheese, perhaps we could revert to the methods of our grandmothers and help by making home-made cheese for our own consumption, wherever there is the milk to spare. But though my grandmother was probably unaware of it, she was throwing a good deal of lime away when she fed the whey to the pigs. At the same time, she couldn’t squeeze all of the whey out of the curd, and moreover, some of the lime adhered to the curd, Nor did she call the curd by the new fangled name of protein, but she must have been aware through the medium of tradition and habit that it was "guid meat," even though she might have laughed at her granddaughter’s method of expressing the same idea, when she says prosaically that cheese is a bodybuilding and body-repairing food. But I was going to tell you why Britain wants our cheese. Cheese consists of roughly one-third protein, one-third fat, and one-third water. Meat is threequarters water. Both are protein foods, and both are needed, but to send cheese means to pack more of a natural foodstuff into the same space. Moreover, there has always been a widespread shortage of lime-containing milk in the dietary of the people of England. They need our cheese to help make up this deficiency. Because cheese will keep for a reasonable time, it is so useful as an article of diet for the army, or for storage in case of air raids. To help feed the people of England with a good food is a very laudable effort on the part of New Zealand. The bones and teeth of British children who receive it, and their physique in general, will be all the better for this effort. (NEXT WEEK: "Influenza," by DR. H. B. TURBOTT).

For recipes for making Cottage Cheese see page 41