SKETCH OF A LARDER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 363, 7 June 1946, Page 30

SKETCH OF A LARDER

(Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

. Nutritionist to the

Health Department)

AVING some guests recently who had just returned from England, I asked the wife about some of their reactions to their wartime food-"My husband was always saying, ‘If only I could get some grapefruit or an apple!’" I asked about fish-"I used to wait for an enormous time in a queue, and perhaps get nothing in the end, or there might be some frozen Iceland cod, which was so tasteless that I gave up. trying to make it palatable. "The children were hungry for milk, in spite of their allowances, and when they asked for it, I used to give them what we had, regretting of course that we had to have dried milk in our tea." Having noted that the average daiiy intake of potatoes and of bread was about 12%0z. of each per person, I remarked: "And you filled up on carbohydrate foods?" "Oh, naturally, if the meat is not there, you eat more potatoes and vegetables. And we made more cheese dishes containing vegetables. And if: the fat is not there, you need more cereals," she said. "And what about the national loaf?" I asked. "When it was made from 85 per cent. flour, its worst fault was the speed with which it went mouldy; but when it changed to the whiter colour of 80 per cent. extraction flour, it kept better, and we had no complaints against it."

"And now it has gone up to 90 per cent. extraction in Britain," I remarked. "The bread in New Zealand is so much nicer," she added, eating some of my wholemeal. "They made better bread in Scotland, too, even though the flour was milled in the same fashion." "And what about the health of the people?" I asked. She said that there had been a levelling up of food distribution through rationing; the poorer people had ‘had a= better deal and were healthier. I asked about dried egg. There had been many jokes about it at first, but the housewives learnt to use it, and when, on the termination of Lend-Lease, the new Food Controller had mooted withdrawing it, there was a big outcry, in the face of which he didn’t dare to leave them to their regime of one-shell-egg-per-month (in winter) and one-per-week (in summer). I was puzzled as to the rationing of breakfast cereals. "The shortage of breakfast cereals was difficult to understand. The oatmeal did not seem like oatmeal. Sometimes one could get some oatmeal, and if I happened to. have some fat, I could make a few oatmeal biscuits. But in New Zealand there are so many things-ice-creams and the like-that the children now don’t take the milk that they ought to have,’ was her worried comment. And that summed up my own worries too about the nutrition of many New Zealand school-children.