FOR WOMEN INCREASED RATION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 146, 22 June 1945, Page 3

FOR WOMEN INCREASED RATION

BUTTER FOR MOTHERS AN OUNCE DAILY REQUIRED The view that nursing and expectant mothers should receive a greater butter ration than six ounces a week has been upheld by the Government, which will no doubt be welcome news to mothers concerned. A recent bulletin, issued by the Department of Health, and based on late experiments in Britain' and the United States of America, says that expectant mothers need one ounce of butter a day (seven ounces a week), as well as two teaspoonfuls of cod liver oil a day.

Expectant and nursing mothers have priority on eggs, which contain vitamins A and D. There is no shortage of beef dripping or other cooking fats, which also contain vitamins, and we have good milk, so that the health outlook for these mothers gives no cause for alarm on the grounds of foods available. Unfortunately, the average expectant mother in New Zealand drinks only three-quarters of a pint of milk a day, instead of the full one and threequarter pints, recommended. ■ Probably only 5 per cent drink the full amount.

Asked whefrer, because expectant mothers usWlly ate little or sometimes no meat, they needed more butter to take its place, an. authority on mother and child care answered in the negative, explaining that meat and butter were in two different categories; one did not supplant the other.

Meat contained proteins and minerals and it would be a lot better for expectant mothers if they left rationed meat alone and concentrated on what we in New Zealand termed "offal" meats, which were unrationed and were far better food value. Such items as liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, tripe, brains and rabbit, were excellent. "The great crime in New Zealand is the scarcity and price of fish," she said. City women were better off than women in the country when it came to obtaining the unrationed meats that were recommended for expectant mothers. It was known that some expectant and nursing mothers gave part of their butter to their husbands for cut lunches, but that was not the Government's fault, she said. They were deliberately depriving themselves.