NEW ZEALAND'S DIET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22468, 11 July 1936, Page 12

NEW ZEALAND'S DIET

Those who make a painful study of diet, and their name is legion nowadays, have been provided with a feast of figures by the Government Statistician on the "consumption of certain important individual commodities'' in New Zealand. It is the sort of feast even dietitians can enjoy without fear of growing fat. Indeed, the facts revealed about the average New Zealander's eating habits may cause them to grow thin from worry. The beginning is bad. New Zealand's addiction to milk is notoriously slight. Canadians, Americans, Swiss, Swedes and Danes imbibe more than twice as much. Th® next item, butter, should raise drooping spirits. New Zealanders lead the world, as Mr. Savage will be pleased to note, in the consumption of butter, eating their way through 550,000cwt., or 40lb. per head, per annum. And if they are not so strong on cheese, they again lead the world, including Australia, in eating beef, mutton and lamb. Their only rivals in this department are the inhabitants of certain South American ranches, where the families, with the exception of sucklings, live entirely on meat, despising such gainishings as bread and vegetables. Even so, the New Zealander's average annual consumption of 2471b. of meat must compare very favourably with anything they can do on the pampas. It is extremely lucky that these figures were not available when Mr. Bernard Shaw visited the Dominion. They would have spoiled everything for him, especially as, the Statistician explains, "no data are available as to the consumption of vegetables." There are, it appears, some rough and ready statistics about onions and potatoes, that dietary horror, but nothing whatever about artichoke* or spinach. Mr. Nash talks about balancing our economy, but there is a higher duty awaiting some reformer—to balance our diet.