LUCILLE AT LUNCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 233, 1 October 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

LUCILLE AT LUNCH.

HOW "MISS AMERICA" EATS. FAIR, FORTY, BUT NOT FAT. (By LILIAN H. BARRETT.) What people cat, and why they cat it, is always a fascinating study. Why one man should have a passion for prunes, and another a violent antipathy to artichokes; why the Samoan should wallow in the greasy joys of barbecued pork, and some Saxon, no less primitive in his make-up, should persist in munching raw greenstuff and black bread —in short, the whole psychology of feeding is a subject of delightful inquiry.

Especially is this so in America —the land of material satisfaction—where food is in the foreground, the background, and the middle distance, all the time. Why is this? Partly because America is at present only conscious of the concrete. Partly because the process of eating is there made so perilously easy. At any rate, the average American scales his other pleasures by their relation to food. For instance, your dancing partner will tell you: "I'd rather dance than eat!" That sums up his highest possible tribute—to dancing! But there are many othere, alas! whose horizon is completely bounded by food, and who cannot dance as they would because they have eaten—too freely, too foolishly, too continuously. American Business Girl. Not so, however, the American business girl. She is, above all else, a business girl. And her "business" is to look beautiful. Not efficiency, but beauty— chic slimnese —is her golden pass-key, opening the treasure chambers of life, be they mercantile or matrimonial. Her daily "eats," therefore, must be considered in relation to her looks and her figure. Complexion? This is easily purchased from Max Factor et al! Coiffure ? A weekly visit to the beauty parlour attends to that. But ''fig m ' e " —aha! that is the crux! And eo, she eats with discretion, if not with common sense. Not hers the overladen tray of the Sydney business girl described Tecently )y the "Star's" correspondent. Not hers the rich and reckless feeding of the married woman of means and leisure. The Fattening Process. One of the latter—a typical United States matron, fair, fat and forty—l saw once in a cafeteria, bearing to our table the following succulent panorama:—A bowl of clam chowder (rich soup); an enormous plate full of roast beef (rare); a big combination salad piled with mayonnaise (this salad will contain perhaps ten different kinds of raw and cooked vegetable ingredients, and is a meal in itself); a large baked potato, with butter; some "hot bread"; a generous slice of pumpkin pie, and a pot of coffee. My solar plexus spun Catherine wheels as I watched her engulfing these triflee.

A Contrast. By contrast, the boyish-figured girl stenographer appears to be starved. Indeed, Miss America is slowly starving her nerves—to keep off the curves. And unices feminine curves come into fashion more persistently, and come to stay, Lucille, the slim stenographer, and Betty, the boyish bookkeeper, and all the other slender young saplings of Uncle Sam's planting with whom I have worked, and talked, and lunched, will become —if indeed they live on—dwindling mothers of a dwindling race. At lunch time, in our office, it was always something like thie:— Lucille (anxiously examining her curves in the mirror): How do I look to-day, Betty? Betty: Like the side of a house! Did you weigh to-day? Lucille: Nope; I daren't! I ate half

a box of candy last night! Betty: Well, Lucille, you gotta take it off at lunch. Look at me. I'm on grapefruit juice. I've lost six pounds in the last coupla weeks, and I can wear a 16in frock now! Lucille: Gosh! ... I must reduce a few pounds this week. .'. But I'm so darn hungry. . . Where'll we go for lunch?

Betty: Better stick to the drug store. Cheaper—and we don't get into temptation like in a cafeteria. . . . I'm gonna have just one minced-ham sandwich, 'n' my grapefruit juice. Lucille.- I'll have a devilled egg—no, egg's too fattening! I guese I'll have a coca-cola—and a piece of lemon-cream pie. This airy diet goes on day after day, until Lucille can no longer digest a "good square meal." In some miraculous way, however, she retains her poise, pep and pulchritude ... for a season! Nerves Ruined. She is at her desk at 8 a.m. every day, after an early snack of toast and coffee, and works automatically until noon. Then comee the coca-cola lunch, and a hasty dash around the stores for shopping. Back for another four hours on the grindstone. The delights of morning and afternoon tea are unknown in American offices. Lucille may make up for lunch-time deficiencies at "supper," if she lives at home. If she "rooms" in

town with Betty, - they will probably take home some delicatessen "junk"— or a can of peas and a jar of pickles— and finish up with half a brick of ice cream! Perhaps they have a "date" for the evening meal, and the boy friend will "splash" them to steake— or even a turkey dinner, obtainable in most places now for from 50 cents to a dollar. But Lucille eats sparingly, ever mindful of her golden pass-key. Afterwards, they may dance half the night. Work again next day. And so the daily round goes on. Till suddenly, at some critical moment of strain, the inevitable reaction comee. Lucille drops suddenly out of the whirling machinery —a butterfly, broken on the wheel—by incomplete nourishment. Starved nerves —denatured food—Nature, the inexorable, will take her toll for it, sooner or later.