PRESERVED FOODS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 June 1924, Page 4

PRESERVED FOODS.

THEIR HEALTH VALUE. TRIBUTE FROM A GREAT DOCTOR, &ir James Crichton-Browne, a man eminent in medical circles, has contributed a very useful article to the Morning Post on the health value of preserved foods. He points out that the process of preservation has made accessible to the poor viands which were formerly the luxuries of the rich. The attempts recently made to depreciate preserved foods and to create prejudice against them are unjustifiable, and may Srove mischievous. The Ministry of fealth in its laht report declared that there has been an enormous improvement in the quantity, quality and variety of foods employed by the English people, and taht in buying food the worker is buying health‘and energy, the power to be well, and to work well. No small part of the improvement thus referred to f'has _ been in the quantity, quality, and variety of preserved foods. &ir James describes Napoleon as the first parent of the preserved food industry. .With an eye to the maintenance of his big armies, he offered a pri7.e for the discovery of a method of preserving 1 perishable foods, and this it was that led Nicolas Apeprt to devise his process of sterilisation by means of heat in hermetically-sealed containers. It is Appert’s process as interpreted, amended, and amplified in the light of the discoveries of another great Frenchman, Pa steur. that has gradually evolved into our present perfect technique.

In connection with modern warfare, the employment of preserved foods suddenly expanded into colossal proportions. It woiild, perhaps, be going too far to say that corned beef won the Great War, hut it is certain that without it we could not have maintained as we did such huge armies in the various fields of conflict. Wholesale and palatable nourishment was supplied in the form of preserved foods, and that the utmost care and scientific precision were employed in their preparation is made certain by the testimony of those who were officially charged with their inspection. Sir William Wilcox, the Home Office Adviser has said that out of 20,000,000 cases of preserved foods supplied to the troops during the war there resulted only seven cases of alleged food poisoning, and these cases he had personally investigated, ancl was able to affirm that each one of them was due, not to the food, but to human germ carriers, who had infected the food during the cooking process.

Ptomaine has long been a fearsome word, but it is now know that ptomaines are practically harmless, and tnat when food poisoning takes place it as not so much the chemical products of putrefaction that are to be blamed as certain organisms or bacilli accidentally introduced into them. In propertly prepared and protected foods there can never be any approach to putrefaction and peccant bacilli or the Gaertner group are much more likely to find their w ay into fresh than into preserved roods. Properly prepared preserved xoocls are up to the moment of consumption inviolate, but fresh foods are being constantly exposed to contamination from the air and by unclean handhug- In the more important outbreaks of illness caused by, or attributed to food reported to the Ministry of Health in 1921, and investigated, ‘there were six deaths, and of these four were due to fresh foods, filleted fish, codfish cockles, mutton and beef, and only two to potted meat.

‘lnstead of fidgeting about preserved foods, we should fix our attention on these fresh foods which we have been too much in the habit of eating complacently, asking no questions for conscience’s sake, but in which often lurk the real dangers to the oublic health. Let us see to our milk supply, which is not only responsible for much infantile mortality, but sows in our babies the seeds of disease, which will declare itself during childhood, adolescence, and manhood, besides occasionally spreadiji? typhood fever. Let us see- to our slaughterhouses, so that no unsound and disease-tainted meat may be passed through them. Let us see to our shops, so that they may no longer harbour flybiown and dust and germ-coated foods. Int i's see to our domestic larders and kitchens, so that they no longer harbour disease-carying vermin and admit foul air. Let us see to all those engaged m handling our food, so that they are in good health, and free from the traces of some bygone illness.” Mr Underhill, technical officer of the Admiralty, thus records his experiences: “ffrom my long experience in the examination of a considerable variety of products in enormous quantities, I should like to place on record my opinion that in the preparation of the various articles every care is taken in the factories of firms of repute, and I cannot recall a single instance in which in the course of my duties I have ever discovered foreign or objectionable matters in the tins examined, or a single authentic case of seripus illness arising from the consumption of any of the products from faultv manufacture.”

“We must go back to Leviticus and realise the guiltiness of touching ‘the unclean things, whether it be a carcass of an uncleau beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle, or the carcass of unclean creeping things, or the uncleanness of man.’ As scepticism and antiscepticism, which have worked such wonders in surgery, should enter more and more largely int our daily lives. These, generally diffused, must be satutary, for then our slums would cease to be slummy and our foods would be dealt with from first to last with the utmost scrupulosity.”