The Food Future Mothers Eat

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30803, 15 July 1965, Page 2

The Food Future Mothers Eat

With the increase in teenage marriages and early pregnancies it was perhaps time to take a thoughtful look at the kind of food girls were eating in their adolescent years, and ask “Is this the food that makes a strong baby and a good breast-feeding mother?” suggests an article in a recent issue of the Parents Centres Bulletin.

Sixteen-year-olds who went to school or to work on a cup of coffee and a slice of white toast, and who filled up at morning break and lunch with white bread rolls, cream buns and soft drink were asking for trouble with teeth and tonsils; but at least some of their body’s growth needs were met from the evening meal of meat and vegetables that few self-respecting New Zealand families care to miss out, said the article. But what of the increasing numbers of flat and room dwellers in the later teens—the training college and university students who crowded into apartment houses, brewing endless pots of coffee and eating largely from tins? Vegetables often took too long to prepare, fruit cost too much, and milk was fattening. Appetite was satisfied with snacks that were starchy, over-sweetened or fatty. After a year or two of this kind of diet many might expect to marry and become mothers.

It seemed a pity that sec-ondary-school tuck shops so seldom attempted to carry out the lessons of the domestic science department, that the free-milk-in-schools scheme petered out from lack of support at the secondary school level, and that nobody thought it worth while to teach good nutrition at the stage when it was most needed—and to link it with good looks and future motherhood. At Helix High School, California, an attempt had been made to put nutrition research into practical use in the school cafeteria where bread for sandwiches contained bonemeal, whole grains and wheat germ. Do-it-your-self salad ingredients were offered as well as hot dishes and there was an abundance of every kind of fresh fruit. Helix boasted that bone fractures had vanished from the playing fields, and its scholastic record had steadily climbed. Improved health, they say, lifts the working capacity.