FEEDING THE MULTITUDE [III]

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 190, 12 February 1943, Page 14

FEEDING THE MULTITUDE [III]

(Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Department of Health)

that the necessity for large-scale catering had been intensified by the war, and it has been explained that there are certain difficulties about "quantity" cookery, if the maximum value of the food is to be retained. We saw that the factor which is likely to be lost if large quantities of food are cooked in an inexpert manner is vitamin C. The sad fact has to be faced, moreover, that there are very few cooks who understand the nutritional pitfalls of large-scale cookery. With vegetables scarce and dear, with oranges being reserved for Australian troops and thus becoming exceedingly scarce in New Zealand, we must look into our cooking methods in order to conserve what nutrient value our food possesses. Some of the ways in which losses of vitamin C occur more particularly in communal cookery can best be explained by illustrations. At a certain 100-bed hospital visited recently, there was a large 20-gallon container for cooking vegetables. It was heated on an electric element which did not happen to be particularly rapid in its action; and I learned that it took an hour for the vegetables to come to the boil. The housewife who cooks for only six and who obeys the rule that vegetables should be put into a little boiling, slightly salted water and _ brought rapidly to the boil, will appreciate that during the long warming-up process required in that particular 20-gallon vessel, there was every opportunity for the initial loss of vitamin C, which occurs if vegetables are not brought’ rapidly to the boil. Another point that is frequently not heeded is that once a vegetable reaches boiling point, it requires no longer to cook a large quantity of the vegetable than to cook the ordinary household amount. The Greatest Waste The two other-and most importantpoints are that the vegetable water from green vegetables contains a concentration of vitamin C equal to that of the vegetables cooked in it, and that after the vegetable water is poured off, the air can get at the vegetable leaves and thus oxidise the vitamin C in them. The greatest losses occur at this stagenamely, in pouring -the vegetable water down the sink, and in keeping the vegetables hot for a long period before they are served. Some experimental findings by the Nutrition Committee will bring home this point: in one study made, a 20-gallon container in which cabbage had been cooked yielded vegetable water equivalent in vitamin C value to 3 or 4 dozen oranges-but the water was poured down the sink. The vegetables served after being kept hot for 1-2 hours after the vegetable water had been poured off, had only one-tenth of the vitamin C content that they would have had if they had been cooked by household means, This sort of waste is abhorrent. ik the previous article, it was stated