COST OF VEGETABLES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 107, 2 November 1939, Page 12

COST OF VEGETABLES

(To tne Editor.)

Sir, —I was glad to read your subleader on the meeting arranged by the Women's Food Value League. The problem of making the protective and preventive foods accessible to people oi lower incomes is one which should be dealt with by the Marketing Committee, or whatever other competent authority is responsible. At present it seems to those of us who have to buy at the lowest prices that vegetables are graded according to age! Possibly also according to social position, as I find that those which are thrust outside on the pavement to hob-nob with the crowd are sold a little cheaper than those which have a more exclusive existence within the shop.

Is it not possible to bring about a more intelligent means of distributing perishable commodities, such as fruit and vegetables? The distribution of milk has reached a very high point of efficiency—why not turn our attention to those other essential foods which deteriorate almost as quickly? I quote the following from an overseas journal:—■

The best quality head lettuce, marked for shipment to big luxury shops in American cities, is going tp town in fancy wrappings of metallic foil veneered with wax. The lettuce, thus attired, attracts the .buyer and fetches higher prices. Tests conducted recently in California show that naked lettuce loses 28.6 per cent, of moisture after twenty-one days of storage, while heads wrapped in foil lose less than 1 per cent.

While we cannot hope to buy our cabbages hermetically sealed, we might make a start by at least fixing the age limit—l am, etc.,

ELIZABETH KELSO