"GIVE IT A GO!"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 230, 19 November 1943, Page 18

"GIVE IT A GO!"

(Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Department of Health)

announced as this is writtenand the telephone wires have been overloaded in consequence! My doctor friends say they have been besieged by patients wanting special allowances. One doctor said it was "up to us to give it a go"-for we had been living in a state of luxury compared with the rest of the world. Our average butter intake per person per year has been the highest in the world-42 Ibs. compared with 33 for Australia, 32 for Canada, 25 for the United Kingdom, 18 for the U.S.A. and Denmark, down to 2 for Italy. The main reasons why we eat butter instead of other fats or oils are because we prefer its taste, and because it contains vitamin A. We shall do all our groaning over the first point, no doubt. As to the second reason, it will take only one drop of a fish-liver-oil which is now being produced in New Zealand to supply what we are losing per person, by butter rationing. The children (who are the ones who matter most) should already be getting their teaspoon dosage of codliver oil (or equivalent in some other preparation to provide 400 International Units of vitamin D and 2000 units of vitamin A). If not, they should be provided with it forthwith. For spreading on bread, you can stretch your butter ration by creaming 4 ozs. of butter with 1 oz. of milk until all the milk is absorbed. Remember that hot toast soaks up more butter; and that it will do us no harm to do as others do by consuming bread-and-butter instead of butter-and-bread. This has been one of our sins-of-commission in the past. Another has been the waste of the fat: that was in those remains of the week-end roast. A household often collects tins of fat which are disposed of by feeding the waxeyes or are collected by the soap works, Learn to Save Fat We shall have to learn to save all fat, to render down our meat trimmings in a slow oven, to clarify our fat (a piece of raw potato in the water is useful for absorbing smells). We shall have to learn to cook with clarified dripping instead of butter; and to think before we choose to fry the fish-it uses up and tends to waste dripping-and there are other interesting and more digestible ways of cooking fish, eg. cooking it in the oven with cheese, onion, and white sauce. Oh yes! the white sauce will probably have to do without the usual butter, but that is where the cheese helps-one-third of it is in the form of fat. Moreover, we can use the cheaper kinds of fish this way. Many of us were brought up to like dripping on our bread-we added salt and pepper to taste. We were also brought up to like bread fried in dripping as an occasional breakfast dish. Steamed puddings, pastry, and plain cakes will be made with dripping. Fancy cakes will just have to go by the board -and no harm done except to the rites of sociability. rationing has just been