MILK AS FOOD

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 1 September 1928, Page 8

MILK AS FOOD

* Several correspondents have written to "The Post" on the subject of milk as an article of diet. Ernest Nelson, Lower Hutt, as "one whose whole life has been a tragedy through the effects of faulty feeding," wishes to strike a warning note. He points out that cows' milk is primarily calves' food, so constituted to. promote the rapid 'growth of a beast which attains majority in from four to five years. The human body takes twenty years to develop, and the correspondent maintains that rapid growth is not necessary. Lasting materials must be used to build the. human body, and milk, according to Mr. Nelson, is not one of them, particularly cooked milk. A little milk is not harmful, provided the rest of the diet is fairly based on Nature, to include raw fruits and vegetables. Another correspondent, "Milk and More Milk," takes quite another view, and from the mother's point of view, holds that mothers need lose no sleep over diet, if they give their children plenty of fresh, pure milk. One pint daily, or two if possible, is suggested. One of her own boys, eight years of age, has never eatcu a good solid meal in his life, but through milk has grown to be half a head taller than the average boy of his own age, and as tall' as ' mauy boys a few years older. The correspondent adds that fresh air has also played its.part in the boy's development, and considers Wellington mothers are particularly fortunate in their milk supply. W: Stuart Wilson return's to tho controversy .in reply to "Average Citizeri's" letter, in reference to the figures quoted by an American insurance company. The correspondent contends that Wellington is practically a country town, and fresh, clean milk: in . bottles should be supplied from the dairying centres only a few hours after milking. Milk thirty hours old is stale milk, asserts Mr. Wilson. He says that milk from cows fed in' the open is superior to that from stall-fed cattle, in the same way that New Zealand butter is superior to the Danish for the same reason. Mr. Wilson criticises recent letters in reference to our milk supply as boosting up the City Council method of milk control, and maintains that their arguments cannot be taken seriously.