Problem To Get New Foods Accepted

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31590, 30 January 1968, Page 16

Problem To Get New Foods Accepted

A “global impasse” had been reached in the problem of finding means of making people eat new high-protein products being developed, said the associate professor of food technology at the University of New South Wales (Dr F. H. Reuter) at the congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.

"All the high-protein products are quite useless until one finds means of making people eat them,” he said. “And this has turned out to be the really difficult problem.

“What would our womenfolk do if somebody gave them a flour-like material, saying that this is good for their children and makes their husbands strong—or even worse, asked them to buy it and make good use of it?

“Imagine people of little education faced with this problem—nothing happens. Nobody will change his diet just like that” Dr Reuter said the obvious way was to incon>orate the stuff into conventional foods such as bread, biscuits, baby food preparations, or beverages. Recipes could be developed for their incorporation into gravies, meat loaves, or gruels. They could be used in school-feeding programmes. free food issues, or in hospital dieU. The protein gap in the

developing countries could only be closed by the use of the same marketing techniques by which new foods were introduced in the developed countries, he said. He spoke of supplementary high-protein foods such as those from residue left after oil seeds have been exploited for oil content. These included soybean, peanuts, sesame, sunflower, and cotton seed.

Other sources were fish, grass, leaves, and microorganisms sueh as bacteria, moulds and yeasts. He mentioned a technique involving whey, protein and casein, which promised a much better utilisation of milk proteins for human use. In most cases, the substance extracted was a bland, light coloured powder, he said. “All the forces of science and technology must be harnessed to develop adequate techniques for the large-scale production of new and auxiliary foods,” Dr Reuter [said. There was a need for an international agency or I foundation.