The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1924. THE ROMANCE OF FOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 251, 22 October 1924, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1924. THE ROMANCE OF FOOD.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The cabled comment of the "Times" on the increasing demand for wheat in the Far East, which appeared iv our news on Friday last, suggest.* a long train of thought. The "Times" is concerned about the price Britain may have to pay for her imported wheat if the hundreds of millions of people in the East become a serious competitor in the world's markets. If they do, it will be another illustration of the changes that exploration, settlement oversea, and the immense improvement in communication, iiave made in the diet of nations. In respect to food services, the world has passed through a revolution. In the old days every community was selfsufficient in its necessaries. People lived in self-contained villages, and cither tilled the soil or worked at sfmple village, trades. When Nature was bountiful there was plenty for all, but when she frowned, famine and death followed. Trade at a distance developed in luxuries, and it grew rapidly when the world was made wider. America was discovered, it has been said, because Europe needed spices. Food and drink were monotonous, and nations contended for the lands that produced the substances required to give them flavour and variety. A cookery book published in ICB3 gives a recipe j for a dish of cod's head, in which the fish cost fourpence and the condiments nine shillings. The openiDg up of new worlds brought many other things to the old. Tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, potatoes—these are comparatively modern in Europe. Beginning by supplying the wants of the well-to-do, tho new countries came to send goods for the masses. In an English cookery book printed in 1734 thpre ia not one recipe for cooking rice, but in one published at the end of the century there are twenty-two. The demand for all these goods had profound consequences in politics as well as commerce. It was a factor in the develop, ment of oversea Empires. Then came the age of steam and consequent rapid communication, and staple foodstuffs grown thousands of miles away were brought to England and Europe in increasing quantities. Wheat is probably the most striking example. It was found that sparsely inhabited new countries like Canada and Australia were admirable for its cultivation. Britain, which used to be a great wheat-growing country, now has to import four-fifths of the wheat necessary to feed her people. . While, however, Europe has grown much more dependent upon suppliea from oversea, some of tho supplying countries have changed their ageold food habits, just as they have adopted new styles in clothes. The East is consuming more wheat, and it is probable that it will call for more meat. Such changes are an inevitable result of trade inter-penetration and the spread of ideas. ,

That the East should ask for more wheat is not surprising. "The demand for wheat is always tending to rise with improved means of communication," says an English authority in a recent work, "for it is found, in general case, that it is preferred to all other cereals, and where obtainable rapidly ousts such cereals as rye and barley from the local market as articles of human food. This is because, owing to its content of gluten, it makes better bread than any other cereal—many cereals, indeed, will not make bread at aIL Though, broadly speaking, the Eastern nations remain faithful to rice as their predominating cereal, yet even among them the demand for wheat is increasing." If a considerable part of the populations of China and Japan became regular users of wheaten flour, the balance of the world's trade in wheat would be profoundly disturbed. An immediate result would be the cumulation of wheat-growing in Australasia.