"AFTERS AND ALL"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 337, 7 December 1945, Page 24

"AFTERS AND ALL"

| (Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the Health Department)

in London was in one of the wards of the hospital in which I was working. One day the. hospital was thrown open for a bazaar to raise funds for its support; (and how the staff voiced its opinion that our New Zealand method of supporting hospitals was superior!). Among the visitors was an aristocratic lady for whose entertainment this little girl was asked ° ‘ LITTLE girl from a poor district

questions about the school meals served in the school that she attended. A naive

and most enthusiastic description was given of the meal, which started with meat and vegetables and ended with "afters and all," the "afters" being illustrated by such things as prunes and tice or steamed puddings. The lady’s remark "So this is how we support

them!" seemed rather unsympathetic, and I prefer to recollect the incident because it served to provide me with a new household expression. "What shall we have for afters to-day?" seems to give the lighter touch to the meal plane ning. They Add Calories Sometimes we spend more time than we should over the preparation of the "afters," and maybe this section of the meal is one of the reasons why there are sO many obese persons in New Zealand-for, as a rule, this course adds a considerable number of calories, For some types of dessert course, the more preparation the more calories does it contain. For instance, apple pies, with their high fat and carbohydrate, are much greater in calorie value than the apples that are put into them. Those women who have a tendency to put on weight should be restrained in their helpings of apple pie or steamed pudding. For the children, and for the husband whose toil involves much muscular activity, steamed puddings are a good way of getting calories into the menu, and this procedure is more necessary now that butter is rationed. Women, however, are not always in need of the calories that they consume. The overweight man or woman after the age of 35 should take thought as to whether a raw apple would not be better, for being overweight after this age tends to encourage the onset of certain diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. Even the sugar added when fruit is cooked adds considerably to the caloric intake. For Sunday dinner, a cold milk pudding such as Spanish Cream, or milk jelly, or banana-custard-fluff, or fruit fool, is appreciated by the family, while the rest from pudding-making is appreciated by the mother. We have some misgiving about serving jelly by . itself, because gelatine is rather an expensive form of protein when one takes into consideration the fact that it is defective when compared with other animal-proteins. If milk is added, up goes the nutritional value. Up goes also the consumption of week-end "surplus" milk occasioned by closing of restaurants and schools during the weekend. One commercial firm contemplates adding rose-hip powder to jelly so that when the jelly is served, it is supplying a substitute for orange juice.