ICE-CREAM v. MILK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 388, 29 November 1946, Page 23

ICE-CREAM v. MILK

TT following statement is made by the New Zealand Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Association in connection with an article by DR. MURIEL BELL in our issue of November 1. Dr. Bell will be given the opportunity to reply later if she wishes to do so.

NDER the title "Milk y. Ice Cream," Dr, Muriel Bell recently wrote an article in The Listener as No. 266 of her series, Advice on Health. Such a statement concerns itself with the relative nutritive values of milk and ice cream, a surprising issue for any informed authority to dispute, knowing full well that strict comparisons between entirely different foodstuffs can be nothing more than misleading among the uninformed. As it stands, the statement prepared by Dr. Bell does great dis-service to a food industry which in the United States involved, in 1945, a turnover of almost 500,000,000 gallons, and which in New Zealand has been steadily building a record of efficiency and quality. It is surprising that Dr. Bell should have so confidently presented undocumented figures as evidence: The information she presented in a popular magazine should have been as incontrovertible as any offered to a scientific journal. But on examination, Dr. Bell’s figures look as if they had been selected to suit a case, in reply to which the manufacturers raise the following issues with Dr. Bell:Calorific Value: Dr. Bell’s 20z. of ice cream are given 110 calories. According to Technical Communication 10: Imperial Bureau of Animal Nutrition, 1938, average commercial ice cream (2oz.) provides almost 200 calories. Fat Content: Dr. Bell’s figures relate to ice cream of 8 per cent, fat content-the existing rationed standard in New Zealand. But she compares with this a high quality milk with fat content of 4.5 per cent. which in all likelihood few consumers receive when the Government standard is 3.25 per cent. Carbohydrate: The statement in question deals with an ice cream of about 25 per cent. carbohydrate, including cane sugar between 14-20 per cent., and Dr. Bell makes observations to the effect that rather much cane sugar in ice cream lessens the

nutritive value. Her figure for earbohydrate content in ice cream is fantastic according to the' evidence of the eminent nutritionists, A. L. and K. B. Wilton ("The structure and composition of foods," Vol, Ill, John Wiley, 1937). In any case, even béfore rationing, cane sugar in New Zealand ice cream rarely amounted to more than 12 per cent. At present, manufacturers are lucky if they have 7 per cent. of rationed sugar available and many use as little as 4 per cent. but maintain palatability by sweeteners. Vitamins and Minerals: 4 Ice cream in New Zealand is made according to American recipes within the limitations of local rationing. Thus under this heading the evidence recently published in the Journal of Dairy Science, 24/8/46, should be noted: as well as Dr. Bell’s figures. She tabulates an ice cream with 185 units Vitamin A, but according to the scientific journal just referred to, average 10 per cent. fat ice cream should have almost 300 Vit. A. Units. Vitamin B is quoted by Dr. Bell at 0,02 mgs. — an extraordinary figure compared with 36 mgs. given by the Journal, while Dr, Bell’s 0.15 mgs. Riboflavin in 2oz. ice cream has to be compared with 134 mgs. of this vitamin for 20z. of ice cream according to reputable standard. Finally in this regard, the article in dispute gives 45 mg. Calcium compared with 84 mg. of this mineral considered average for this mineral from the quoted evidence. Conclusion Dr. Bell has given the public an inaccurate picture, As a nutritionist she is entitled to emphasise the value of milk, but the latter can stand on its own merits without being puffed up in a comparison with a belittled and probably non-existent type of ice cream. In New Zealand we can well do to follow a little more the American pattern of food preparation and consumption and among the proven essentials in their dietary is ice cream. The American service units, when they came to New Zealand a few years ago, sought huge contracts for the supply of this food. Sugar or any other ingredient in ice cream does not appear to have detracted from the world-renowned perfection of American teeth. Perhaps if our Health Department would throw off an ostrich attitude and encourage children to eat ice cream as well as milk, there will never again be the evidence before military medical boards that the teeth of average New Zealanders present a problem of the first order to nutritionists, Ice cream consists of an admixture of butterfat, milk, sugar, gelatine, and in many cases: honey, glucose, malt, and other nutritious ingredients. Its food value is good because the ingredients are good. Dr, Bell can compare it with milk by way of office desk calculations if she wishes, but in so doing, justice should be given to that which she thinks is inferior. If the Health Department cannot at present give approval to daily ice cream for school-children, a time seems not far distant when we will at. least see better-advised communities abroad giving children what they like, and what, in the case of good ice cream, is nourishing. ~

But in this connection Dr. Bell’s own words should be recalled as printed under the title "Books About Food," (Listener, November 8, p. 20); *.....- 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 prejudice, or by the existing general | prejudices. ee