FOODS COMPARED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 108, 8 May 1943, Page 6

FOODS COMPARED

RATIONS IN BRITAIN DOMINION CONSUMPTION (0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. There have ■ been plain official hints that we will be required to reduce our butter consumption. It is also evident from cabled reports that the United States, Canada and Australia are concerned over the high consumption of meat by the local populations, in view of the necessity to maintain adequate supplies for the fighting forces and the people of the United Kingdom who are under severe rationing. If New Zealanders were put on meat, butter and cheese rations they have so spacious a margin on their average consumption that they could spare a good deal for export without reaching the danger-pomt of malnutrition. We share with Australia the reputation of'■■being the biggest meat eaters in the world. Contrast the New Zealand meat consumption of 2521b a head annually with the' English war-time allowance of a shilling's worth a week. There are occasional releases in England of canned meats and fish, and the Homeland is possibly better off than ourselves in respect to canned fish. Distribution is on a points system—l 6 points a month— and the whole allowance would be needed for a pound tin of salmon or an equal weight of sardines. However, herrings or pilchards, which are not usually imported, are available for 12 points. Imported canned meats require 16 points, but those prepared in Eire or the United Kingdom are marked at 8 points a month. New Zealand's butter consumption a head is 421b a year, Australia's 331b, Canada's 321b and the United Kingdom's in peace time 251b, now down to 6Jlb a year. The differences in diet of various countries is exemplified in the case of cheese, of which the New Zealand annual consumption is only half that of Britain's normal of 91b a head, now curtailed to 6-Jlb. Until the rationing system changed the demand, pork was a very large item of diet in the United Kingdom. It averaged 421b a head. New Zealanders consume just over half that quantity, namely 121b of pork, and 101b of bacon a head each year. The conclusion to be reached from these contrasts is that New Zealanders could spare something from their daily diet in. order to increase exports to the fighting services and the British population without much inconvenience, certainly with no risk of hunger.