EAT MORE BUTTER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 152, 14 June 1935, Page 13

EAT MORE BUTTER

Campaign in Great Britain DOUBLING OF CONSUMPTION A pound of butter a week for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom as a means of improving the national health and solving the problem of surplus dairy supplies is urged by Lord Border, the eminent British physician, in a foreword to a booklet, "Butter and the Nation’s Diet,’’ which has just been published by the London agency of the New Zealand Dairy Produce Board. This ration would be double Britain’s present batter consumption. The booklet, which collates an impressive body of official British medical opinion on the nutritive value of dairy foods, particularly of grass-fed butter, is being circulated by the board to medical officers of health, public hospitals, school medical officers, education and public assistance committees, medical practitioners, women’s associations, and health organisations throughout the United Kingdom, with the object of promoting a greater consumption of butter generally. At the same time, the booklet incorporates specific testimony from eminent medical experts as to the particularly high and uniform nutritive value of the New Zealand product, but its main object is to promote medical and public appreciation of the nutritional importance of butter generally. A CURIOUS FEATURE. "It is a curious commentary on the economic situation to-day," states Lord Border, ‘ ‘ that while measures are being devised to control, and in some cases to / restrict, the production of food, we are at the same time propounding ‘minimum diets,’ and seeking to improve the present inadequate feeding of a large proportion of our population. "This anomaly is particularly striking in the case of so-called ‘surpluses’ of milk and milk products, which are so useful in the proper feeding of children. In the improvement of the daily food of millions of underfed and unwisely-fed persons there is vast scope for absorbing these surpluses. "Butter is milk in one of its most palatable and easily assimilable forms, and its food value and economy have hitherto been insufficiently recognised." Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the British Ministry of Health, is quoted to show how the people’s nutrition has benefited in recent years from the increased consumption of dairy produce and other fresh foodstuffs rich in vitamins. He advocates a greater general consumption of such foods, and is supported in his plea by the evidence of 320 medical officers of health in the United Kingdom. MEDICAL EXPERTS’ VIEW. Dr. H. C. Corry Mann and Dr. S. S. Zilva, in experiments which they have carried out under the direction of the British Medical Research Council, testify to the high and uniform nutritive ■value of grass-fed butter from the Dominions. The Committees on Nutrition appointed by the British Ministry of Health and by the British Medical Association (which are now collaborating in a campaign to raise the physical standard of the nation) also stress the need for an adequate provision of butter, emphasising its "energy value" as well as its vitamin content.