CHEESE IS VALUABLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 15

CHEESE IS VALUABLE

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, YA and YZ Stations of the NZBS by DR. H. B. TURBOTT, Deputy-Director-General of Health.

S a boy I had holidays on the farm of pioneer grandparents, a farm that became theirs following participation in the Maori wars. My old grandfather drove a black horse, Te Kooti, so called in memory of that chieftain. I remember his lovely orchard with all sorts of fruits and small fruits. I remember my grandmother’s shaded, cool milk room with the milk laid out in shallow pans. I watched the hand-skim-ming, the long hand-churning that produced the tasty farm butter and viewed the occasional production of a home cheese. This cheese-making was essential as it loomed large in the diet of the worker. The bread and cheese eating habit was brought from the old country.

£ne modcermm wie lacks the culinary art of butter and cheese making, and the modern New Zealand family has lost the cheese-eat-ing habit of its forebears. Not having to take butter and cheese at home is all to the good: not

having cheese in the daily diet is all to the bad. Cheese is a good, value food. It is chiefly the curd and fat of milk-one-third good body-building protein, onethird fat and one-third water. Beef, a much more popular food, is about twothirds water. Both cheese and beef are good body builders, but cheese wins out economically. Beef is about one-fifth protein, cheese a third; beef is about a sixth fat against a third in cheese. Cheese is rich in lime or ‘calcium, so needed for strong teeth and bones. Yes, cheese is worth cultivating, if you’ve néver had the taste for it. It satisfies hunger and is good for working on. Why? Because it packs a lot of energy in very little bulk due to its fat content. Most New Zealand households eat a lot of butter, and also use cream freely, deeming these very good foods. The truth is we eat too much of these. Cheese knocks spots out of them for value. A school class could prove it by keeping white mice or rats, feeding one lot.wheat and milk, another on wheat and cheese, a third lot on wheat and

butter, and a fourth lot on wheat and cream. The rats on wheat and milk will do best and wheat and cheese next best, those on wheat and butter or cream will not grow so well. You wouldn’t dream of replacing milk in the diet with cheese. But cheese can be complementary. For example, if you drink a pint of milk in the day you get from it over three quarters of your calcium requirements. Then take an ounce lump of cheese and between the milk and cheese you'll have more lime than needed. This wouldn’t be true of butter and cream. Housewives need to recast priorities in dairy products. Mothers with growing children particularly so. Let’s put them in order of body building importance-milk, then cheese! We must be honest and leave out butter and cream. They don’t bodybuild at all, but give us energy and vitamin A from their fat content. New Zealand homes have lost out by losing the taste for cheese: It certainly wasn’t our pioneering grandmothers who let this happen, but somewhere the rot started. The whisper went round that cheese was indigestible, mothers built up the idea and kept chil- dren off this good food. It is true that cooked cheese may be indigestible, but I fancy the fault is in overcooking. Be that as it may, raw cheese digests well, and can be taken by a child eighteen months old. And that’s where we’ll have to start again if we want New Zealand to eat more cheese-with little children. Start children off with a very little, preferably grated, in "a sandwich, or over some fish or cooked or raw vegetable. Try to get the taste developed in the pre-school years, if you can. It’s such a good cut-lunch standby if the liking is there. New Zealanders eat too little cheese, only about a third of what they should. Our health would benefit with ‘less butter and cream, and more cheese each day. Our forebears were cheese wise. This generation would be diet wise to become daily cheese-eaters.