IS IT A FOOD?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 98, 20 September 1950, Page 4

IS IT A FOOD?

Sir, —Your correspondent, John Barleycorn, seems to have set off a string of correspondence which, I am sure, he never anticipated when he penned his humorous little missive.

Hard Facts, in his reply, has used one small phrase divorced from its context, to wage war on alcohol in any of its forms and has completely ignored the humorous and faintly sarcastic tone of the letter as a whole. Perhaps Hard Facts has no sense of 'humour; perhaps, ir he does possess a sense of humour, it will not stand the strain when alcohol is the object of humorous reference. I wonder what his reaction would have been had the original letter referred to some of the patent medicines or hair lotions, many of which contain large amounts of alcohol. In this modern world of strife and strikes a little humour can work wonders. Therefore, I say, more power to the pens of John Barleycorn and his ilk.

Yours etc., FUNNY BONE Whakatane, September 19.

Sir, —Your correspondents “Grown Up” and “Full Facts First,” want to talk “beer” rather than “alcohol.” Of what use is a watch without a mainspring? And of what use to a drinker is. beer without its active component, Alcohol? They agree beer is not a food, yet one declares it “contains sugar, malt and yeast all of which have food value.” So to them it is and is not a food! All should know that when the sugar, barley (malt) and yeast are sufficiently fermented, or decomposed, to make the alcohol that makes the beer, their food values are destroyed. An appalling quantity of good food is thus withheld from the hungry of this distressed world.

They state, “research is needed here.” Some of the world’s greatest scientists have conducted ample extracting research. Many school \ children have benefited by these findings in chemistry, biology and general knowledge, but prejudice and indulgence prevent their general acceptance. These researches en- x able Sir Victor Horalev, cne of the

greatest scientists of our day, to say: “Alcohol is always included among the poisons and in the pharmacological classification of poison it is invariably placed side by side with chloroform and ether, and described as a narcotic poison. This is the position assigned to alcohol by the pharmacologists of all countries.” Another authority, Robert S. Carroll, M.£>., in “What Price Alcohol,” a scientific work on alcohol, states: “The scientific study of alcohol—intensive, increasingly intelligent, and eminently fair these latter years—has little good to say for it. Many physicians in active practice do not prescribe it in any form

once a year. Its worth as a medicine is practically non-existent except in the eyes of those whose professional insight is tinctured with alcoholmindedness. Frankly we cannot think of this drug longer as being on trial. It has already been condemned. It is man who is on trial today—his intelligence, his sincerity, his strength of purpose, and always his sense of duty to his offspring.” Yours etc., FACTS FIRST. Whakatane, September 18. (This correspondence is now closed. Ed.)