Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1939. HOME TO LUNCH

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 8

Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1939. HOME TO LUNCH

It is a relief from the greater worries of the international and the internal "situation" to have the teachers in conference this week in Wellington discuss whether children should take their lunches to school or go home and have a meal. Not that the question before the Educational Institute was unimportant or the principle at stake petty. In the long run the issue of "home to lunch" —to go or not to go—has probably a deeper bearing on the welfare of humanity than any international crisis of temporary duration. If, as one member of the conference suggested, the tendency is for mothers more and more, no matter how close they live to the school, to cut lunches for the children rather than have them home for lunch, the effect may, or may not, be harmful to the rising generation. Accordingly, it was submitted to the conference that the Health Department should make a special plea to parents, emphasising the necessity of children going home for the midday meal whenever possible. The mover even went to the length of referring to the domestic cutters of lunches as "tin-opener mothers," which drew from another member the plea that it was beyond the functions' of the conference to castigate parents and ascribe to them a dereliction of duty in not providing a midday meal for the children.

Thus the question begins to ramify. There is the position of the harassed mother, who, to economise time and trouble in preparing meals without domestic help, resorts to food in tins as a convenience. There are the merits and demerits of food in tins as a diet for children. There is the disadvantage in the alternative of coming home to lunch involved by limitations of time, hurrying home and back and bolting a meal in the interval. These are all problems for the parent, the teacher, the doctor, and the dietitian. , They may be complicated later by the anticipated disappearance of canned foods from the dinner table due to import prohibitions. This may put mothers on their mettle to provide tasty substitutes or it may depress them to despair. In Britain they have met the problem at least partially by furnishing children with meals at the school itself. These at present are free, but in a recent broadcast discussion reported in the "Listener," one speaker advocated standard meals—regular school meals at a cheap price—arguing thus:

Lots of children today have to travel a long distance to school, and they have a full day when they get there — including a full dose of strenuous exercise. If the parents can afford it —and the cost runs between fourpence and eightpence—it's far the best thing for the children to have the school meal, for it not only gives them the right fuel to run on, but it gives them the chance of a rest afterwards.

New Zealand has made a start with free milk, but there appears to be no demand at present for school meals, free or otherwise.

Of the importance of diet, from childhood on, there is no doubt, but doctors differ on detail. There is much in the accumulated wisdom of the age-long experience of mankind, and the wise physician, while prescribing particular diet for particular patients, is not disposed to be either fussy or faddy. Thus a Harley Street physician, broadcasting again, has this to say:

The food we should eat is obviously, to a large degree, a matter of individual, preference or necessity. What I think really matters is whether we relish what we eat. . . . Some people are definitely carnivorous, and many of these are undeniably hardy and strong. On the other hand, many of our countrymen, either from inclination or on principle, now favour a vegetarian diet and exhibit a uniform type of health, freedom from disease, and extraordinary endurance, which is often the envy of those who are not willing to practise what seems to them rather a poor and rigorous way of living.

Now, it may be that, while there is no disputing about tastes, the necessity will arise, through changing circumstances, for considerable readjustments in the dietary of the people. If the markets for New Zealand's primary produce shquld, through one cause or another, contract, New Zealanders will have to take a hand in the consumption of at least some of the surplus. Cheese, for instance, cuts a very poor figure on the present bill of fare, compared with the vast consumption of this valuable article of food on the Continent of Europe, or even in Britain. Our consumption of milk also is low compared with that of North America. Here are opportunities for

the dietitian and the domestic provider. Fruits and vegetables of all kinds grow well on our soil, but are in insufficient demand at normal times. On the other hand, the restriction on certain imported foods, particularly canned fish, should make room for a greater exploitation of the possibilities of our own harvests of the sea and land. There is an abundance of simple, wholesome dishes that might be adapted from the old district dietaries of the British Isles, and, for that matter, of America and elsewhere. Life has been a little too easy in the recent past in New Zealand for people to get down to hard necessity as the pioneers had to do in the early days and the soldiers in war time. In the meantime, whether, with the school children, one goes home to lunch or not, there is a great opportunity for study in the preparation of food. There is much in what a correspondent said in a letter to "The Post" this week; asking for a simple cookery book, suitable for a bachelor or "a man when mum is away from home." What is wanted, he said, is a collection of recipes for simple everyday things for a man who needs a "binder." The philosophy of food is not so difficult after all.