BOOKS ABOUT FOOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 20

BOOKS ABOUT FOOD

(Written for "The Listener" by DR. MURIEL BELL, Nutritionist to the Health Department) HEN confronted with questions as to what books are available on food -what A. P. Herbert refers to as cute tributions to the "stomach library"-it is not always easy to give a satisfactory answer. In such a subject as nutrition, where there have been rapid advances, books quickly get out of date. It must be admitted, too, that nutrition has not yet become a fully-fledged science: it is still characterised by a good deal of conjecture: its standards are as yet only tentative. Consequently, books about food tend to be coloured by the author’s (corttinued on next page)

(continued from previous page) prejudices or by the existing general prejudices of this era of nutritional opinion. However, though we realise its limitations, we need literature on food. Here are the names of some recent publications; all of them are useful additions to one’s library. 1. Nutritive values of Wartime Foods. His Majesty’s Stationery Office. 1/-,. 2. Tables of Food Composition, National Research Council, 2101 Constitution Ave., Washington, 25, D.C. 10 cents. (The former has foods that are more like our own; the values are conveniently expressed in amounts per cent as well as per ounce. The latter gives values for eleven nutrients instead of nine.) 3. Manual of Nutrition, Ministry of Food, H.M:S.O. 1/-. (This is a summarised statément of salient points in the -present knowledge of nutrition.) 4. A.B.C. of Cookery. Ministry of Food. H.M.S.O. 1/-. (A cookery book expressing a new attitude, telling the housewife how best to retain the nutritional value of foods. 5. Food and Nutrition by Cruikshank. E. & S. Livingstone Ltd., Edinburgh. 16/-. (This is a book by the Professor of Physiology in the University of Aberdeen. It is written with a bias towards public health, the author having in mind the proposed course in nutrition for doctors studying for the _ Diploma in Public Health, It has interesting chapters on bread and on milk, on which it deals with such

aspects as pasteurising plants, accredited herds and the like. There are graphs illustrating how much more an adolescent needs than his or her parents. A chapter is included on the findings of the Hot Springs Conference; and the World Food and Agriculture Organisation is designated as the first plank to bridge the gulf between War and Peace.) 6. The Nation’s Larder. By Drummond, Orr and others. G. Bell & Sons. 2/6. (A set of lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, 1940.) 7. Feeding the People in Wartime. Orr and Lubbock, 1/6. Macmillan. 8. For those who already have a good background of nutritional knowledge and are not afraid of chemistry, Nutrition Reviews, published monthly, by Nutrition Foundation Inc., New York, N.Y., U‘S.A., 2.50 dollars, are useful, as are also the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, printed by Heffers, Cambridge, 25/- per volume. In making this list, it is assumed that librarians are already acquainted with The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition by Sherman, The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition, by McCollum and co-workers, Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews, Food Manufacture, Food Processing, Packing, Marketing, Food Research, and the Journal of Nutrition, ete.