EGGS...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 902, 16 November 1956, Page 27

EGGS...

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB. YA and

YZ sfations of the

NZBS by DR.

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-Director-

General of Health

RE you able to afford eggs all the year round? If not, this is the time you should be preserving them, and putting them away for the lean, dear period. In our daily dietary pattern chart, which I would like every mother to have hanging somewhere in the kitchen, if not out on a wall at least on the inside of a much-used cupboard door, you will find eggs ranking number three. First comes milk, then cheese, next eggs. I wish your food thinking followed that priority-milk, cheese, eggs, then meat, potatoes, vegetables, then. fruit, butter,’ bread, cereals, and lastly other eats important but for change and to satisfy appetite, if still hungry after eating the body builders and health givers. What one would like to see is every New Zealander eating one egg a day, but a great many families cannot afford this, The next best is not to fall below three to five eggs a week per person. Even this is too much for some family pockets. The only solution is to buy a lot at their cheapest price, and put some down, as Grandma used to say, for the winter. Nowadays the dear season seems longer than that, so go to it now. Now what of the eggs you are holding for current use? Eggs do not keep very well, as you know from sad experience! At room temperature they soon become stale. Those of you who have refrigerators have no problem, for eggs preserve their quality and freshness very well at temperatures between 38 to 45 deg. F. So all you refrigerator people have to do is to see that your egg shelf in the frig. is ranging from 38 to 45 degrees, and you will have fresh eggs as you will. But don’t store them upside down! Didn’t you know there was a right and wrong way to store eggs? Well, there is! An egg should be stored with the pointed end down. The reason? The pointed end has the toughest shell, so there is less likelihood of breakage. Further, the ‘air cell is at the rounded end. This air cell should not be broken or the egg will deteriorate more rapidly. Storage of eggs for current use, when you haven’t a frig. involves finding the coolest spot possible, and keeping them there, pointed ends down. _Why are eggs good for us? They are complete food for the developing chick,

provided it eats some of its shell for extra lime, and mighty good providers of health giving and body building factors in human nutrition. One egg supplies to a grown-up one-tenth of the daily protein needed, In this respect it equals one ounce of cheese or of meat. A little calculation will show you that a favoured dish in our fish and grill rooms, steak with two fried eggs, is somewhat overdoing things! One egg gives us 15 per cent of the iron needed each day, and a decent helping of vitaman A and of some components of the B group, and a little vitamin D. These are the major values of eggs to us but, as you can guess, an egg must contain most things needed for life and growth, and we certainly don’t know yet everything that this involves. Our nutrition knowledge is far from complete. If you can’t afford all the eggs recommended for family health, who should go without? I’m sorry, but it is father! A woman needs more iron in the diet than a man, so do ¢hildren through the rapidly-growing years. So father must go without, not mother, when eggs are short. I know you will not make the children miss out but, if you are an average New Zealand wife, you will reckon your man must have his egg. Well, you are wrong. Father can do without much better than you can. How can you make it up to Dad?) Make him a pot of thick pea soup, which he likes, and put some milk in it! Dried peas and beans are a substitute for oes, and pea soup is an estimable dish. With the summer coming on, there is the risk of food poisoning with lightlycooked egg dishes such as Spanish cream, and with uncooked or very lightly-cooked white of egg in cold puddings. Now this risk in our country seems to come from duck eggs, as our ducks may carry a food poisoning germ of the salmonella family. Duck eggs are safe, only so long as they are always cooked for at least ten minutes. Now back to my starting point! Please preserve eggs now, while plentiful and reasonably cheap.