THE COST OF WATER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 140, 15 June 1937, Page 6

THE COST OF WATER.

A UNIVERSAL FOOD TAX.'

The suburban dweller can buy a thousand gallons of water at a cost of about a shilling, which cost includes delivery when and as required, insicle or outside the house. What he buys is also pure; it has less, often much less, than one part per thousand of impurity; considered as a "chemical." it could be labelled

"[inre." But the same suburbanite can, and does of necessity, buy water at relatively exorbitant rates compared with that above mentioned, and, further, the water so purchased is highly contaminated, or rather mixed, with various other materials. Thus, while water in whisky costs at least 6/ a lb, or in good beefsteak about 1/3 a lb, water in the form of cabbages is much cheaper—viz., about twopence a lb.

You will disagree, perhaps, with these figures, asserting that one is not really paying for the water in these commodities, but for the something else present: but would you buy whisky, or steak, or cabbage that had no water in it. or would you care to invest money in a scheme for desiccating steak and selling it ? But discounting the cost of the water in tlin articles, mentioned to one-hundredth its price, and setting aside whisky as an artificial product, we still see that we pay a highly disproportionate price for the water content of these and other foodstuffs. This simply shows how much importance we attach to this water, the main reason being that its presence conveys to us the idea of palatabilitv and nutritive value; it_indicates to us, in so many instances, the difference between a real foodstutr and something which happens to be eatable. Dryness and Decay. It emphasises also our innate association of water with life: and although certain low forms of life, seeds, spores, etc.. may be dried without being killed, for higher forms plenty of water is a necessity, desiccation becoming synonymous with the decline of life and with

decay. Tt is not surprising to find that man's most vivid idea of the extreme of discomfort is tlie idea of life prolonged without the presence of water; hell is proverbially a place devoid of jWnter.

The question of the costliness of water arises also in connection with the expense of its transport. A pood market for manv foodstuffs depend#! on the possibility of offering such materials in an unaltered, fresli condition, ami this condition is dependent larcelv 011 the m;i iii 1 cna arc uf the actual original water conlent. Obviously the carriage of this inherent water entails expense: as one authority put it. "'water levies a sort of food tax almost universally oil all foods."' Naturally. too. the tax atlccls more severely those countries which import loodst nil's in large quantities from overseas. Thus Creat Britain imports over •">(1 per cent of the meat eaten there, and at least half of this would be water; the amount of water imported in the form of eggs, vegetables and milk must also lie very great. Nature's Solution. Nature, when faced with I lie problem of the transport and distribution of foodstuffs, solves it mainly in two ways. Animals and fish, by virtue of their power of autoloeomotion. can not only find their own food supplies, but as the prev of other animals carry a supply from place to place—a quid pro quo arrangement— but it does ensure a supply of fresh foodTn the case of vegetation. Nature makes little or no effort to distribute it in a fresh condition. Much, however, is transported in the form of seeds, spores, etc.. with the aid. often, of certain auxiliary adaptations to enable the material to be carried or blowrt about easily and unharmed. The success of the procedure depends largely 011 the fact of desiccation, making the 'material as light as possible.

In more resent tim«s man has, by chilling and freezing, made possible the transportation of meat, fruit, vegetables over long distances, and also their preservation over much longer periods: but Nature has decreed that lie can do so only by debiting himself with the expense of handling at the same time much more water than the actual food material which lie needs. Turning from foodstuffs, we find also that expense in handling water of content occurs in connection with many other substances. Manv chemicals, such as soap, washing soda, borax, contain water in greater or less amount; crystals of Epsom salts have about ."">0 per cent, and crystals of blueetone about 35 per cent of water.