WHAT ABOUT FISH FOR TEA?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 154, 5 June 1942, Page 17

WHAT ABOUT FISH FOR TEA?

(Written for "The Listener’ by

DR. MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the Health Department)

NE recalls the much-quoted beginning of that recipe for hare soup-"first catch your hare!" Catching the fish might be easier for some of us, but harder for most of us. It would have been much easier in the "good old days." The reasons for this might make an interesting story, but that story cannot be told here- So for most of us, it is a case of "first buy your fish. " That also is not as easy as it used to be: but when one remembers that a considerable quantity of fish now goes to feed our

| armed forces, also that the oil fuel that is nowadays used for the engines of nearly all our fishing vessels is also less easy to buy, and that many of our best fishing grounds are closed against fishing for reasons connected with our naval defences, one must regard that as just one more little trial that has to be endured till the blessings of peace once more return to our world, It’s Good for the Fish We can get some satisfaction from the thought that, while many fishermen have to put up with smaller catches, and the fishmonger’s stocks are smaller, and the fish course on many tables more often approaches the vanishing point, the fishes themselves in their saline sanctuaries are enjoying a respite which will ensure their survival in bigger numbers, and enable them to breed more numerous generations of young, and so build up bigger and better harvests of the sea for normal times. That

is what happened round the British coasts in 1914-18. When the fishing fleets went back from their mine sweeping and various other naval duties to ‘heir normal trawling operations, they caught more and bigger fish than had been encountered for many years. When foodstuffs are scarce, it behoves us to buy even more judiciously than usual. It would not be wise to drop fish out of our diet altogether just because we cannot get our customary favourite kinds so easily or so cheaply as formerly. The flesh of every kind of fish to be found on New Zealand mar-kets-and of those (like eels), that never find their, way to the marketcontains nutriment of the highest quality. But here we are at the end of our allotted space with much still to be said about fish, which will thus require to be "continued in our next." (NEXT WEEE: "The Nutritive Value of Fish,’ by DR. BELL)