MODERN DIET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20229, 13 April 1929, Page 6 (Supplement)

MODERN DIET.

A PROBLEM FOR THE HOUSEWIFE. El* KATHERINE CARE. 'Among the many problems which the modern housewife has to contend with perhaps the most perplexing is the question of diet. How shall she feed her family ? What school of dietitians shall she follow ? Or shall she flout the whole faction of modern food faddists and feed her children on porridge and meat and .vegetables and plain suet or cereal puddings just as she was fed in childhood and as her parents were probably fed before her? It is difficult to break away from the bondage of habit and custom and the mother who sets out to follow the teachings of modern dietitians is likely to bo " up against it" more often than not for the simple reason that tho dietitians cannot agree among themselves. Through a column or two in the daily paper ono will conclusively and convincingly prove his own pet theories one day and on tho morrow am equally famous authority on the food question will conclusively and convincingly provo the very opposite. " Eat no meat whatever," yell the green-leafers, " the habit of meat-eating is unclean, unnatural and completely unnecessary. Sustain your body on the greens and the grains which bountiful s«aturo has' provided for you!" Then just as the housewife has got the family going nicely on lentils and lettuce and other products of the garden some other diet authority lises up excitedly and sounds a warning against the homely lettuce lest it should have been swilled under tap too carelessly before being slashed i}p for the salad. The favourite growing place of lettuce, he will point out, is in a. luscious mixture of loam and stable manure from which latter it may convey disease germs—even the dreaded cancer —to its unsuspecting consumers. The white loaf of bread which the baker and tho farmer's wife have flaunted with such pride ever since the millers first learnt to produce a dazzling white flour is now in disgrace. We must eat brown bread, they tell us, because white bread is about as nourishing as saw-dust. But is the brown bread that we buy made of real whole-meal ? Do tho millers give us pure whole-meal or is the public taste for whole-meal bread as yet so undeveloped and so unenthusiastic that our wheat-meal has still to be more or less refined? There are many conscientious mothers who would like to be sure that tho brown bread they encourage, coax or compel their children to eat is the unspoiled product of the wheat grain.

Statisticians fell us that the demand for meat is lessening. And the green, leafers, applaud and rejoice that the civilised world—that over-fed gluttonous, disease-ridden world—is at last coming to its senses. On the other hand, there are eminent authorities in the scientific .world who contend that man. needs his daily ration of fresh meat, that the flesheating nations of the world * are the dominant nations with tho originating brains and the mental and moral ascendency over the lesser peoples who, from necessity if not from choice, subsist on vegetable products. Then there are the vitamin-chasing friends who advise us to eat kidneys, and hearts and livers, tripe and. brains (oh, horrors!) and reject the tired and worn-out muscletissues of the poor slaughtered animals. The disposal of tho carcases when these dainty tit-bits have been removed is a question unclucidated. One earnest dietitian whose book I have before me advises young and old alike to cut out everything that is sloppy, or •" fancy " and to livo on nuts, raisins and other dried fruits, brown bread, honey, fresh fruit and vegetables and olive oil. Dry foods and liquids must not be taken together and eggs, if taken at all, must be swallowed raw. And so when the thoroughly enlightened woman of tho futuro finds herself at a tea-party and is asked just how she likes her tea wo can expect to see her look suddenly heroic and say " No, thank you. I never take afternoon tea nor cake, but if you will be so kind as to track a fresh-egg into a cup for 1110 I eh nil enjoy that very much!" But. tho very idea of it makes mo *woon.