NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23355, 25 May 1939, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FRESH FOODS IN NUTRITION Addressing a national conference in London on the "Wider Aspects of Nutrition," Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison stated that a well-consti-tuted diet of frefjh, natural foodstuffs contained all things needful for normal nutrition, so far as food was capable of supplying them, always provided that those derived from agriculture were produced on fioils that were not impoverished. Certain races of his acquaintance had discovered that truth for themselves centuries ago, in spite of their ignorance of calories, proteins, or vitamins. Their diet had a particular interest lor the British people. It consisted of whole meal grains, milk and its products, pulses, green leaf and root vegetables, fruit and meat occasionally. He was less concerned with the components of those foods than with their freshness.

BURDENS OF YOUTH "It is a matter of great satisfaction to me that 1 am no longer very young," asserted Miss Pamela Frankau, tho novelist, in a broadcast talk. "Do I scorn youth? Not exactly. Youth is charming; youth is happy; youth is vital and romantic —but only if you look at it from outside. When you yourself are living in it, it is in fact a very uncomfortable business, lo he 'sweet seventeen' is probably the least sweet of all life's experiences. Awkwardness, doubts, self-absorption, these are the burdens of the young woman. They must continue until she has found •herself, which she usually does round about the age of thirty-five. Found herself? Perhaps 1 to have said lost herself. Consider the intense egoism of youth. The slogan of youth can be summed up in six words, M wish. I. hope. I fear.' The woman of thirty-five is done with all that. She has begun to look outward and not inward."

FROM SENNACHERIB TO HITLER Have any readers noticed the parallel with present-day wickedness denounced by the prophet Isaiah about the year 700 8.C.? asks a correspondent writing to the Spectator. Isaiah shows.lis Sennacherib of Assyria swaggering over the,world, and bragging that the scooping of one kingdom after another into his empire was as easy as taking eggs out of a deserted nest. I quote Isaiah x. 13-11, Revised Version: "He hath said, by the Strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and 1 have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and I have brought down as a valiant man them that sit on thrones: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples: and as one gathereth eggs that are forsaken, have T gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or that opened the mouth, and chirped."

SERENITY OF THE ENGLISH There was a time when England was little affected by. the views, and still less by the words, of others: she went her way serene in. the possession of her stable soul, writes Lord Gorell in the Comhill Magazine. That time has passed—it may be. only for a while: all .through the chequered story of the recent past, her ear has been unusually lent to ttye orations of the Continent, and in the process she has been besought by her advisers and mentors to "keep calm." Does she ever do anything else? .Mark Twain in one of his humorous articles describes how a tyro edited an agricultural paper, and among other paragraphs inserted one telling those whose clams were excitable to play music to them: it was a saddened, yet friendly, critic who informed him that the injunction was superfluous. The English never have been clams and are not now: but this they have in common with that bivalve —they do not need either music or adjurations to impress upon them the virtues of serenity; their failing is the converse —they (sometimes) need a big sharp pin to galvanise them into activity. That, let it be hoped, they have had now in sufficiency—and so an end to these anxious ear-strainings to our Continental actor-managers.

PRICE-FIXING DIFFICULTIES " How can you fix the fair value of a joint of meat?" asked Mr. R. H. Cross, M.P.. in a Commons debate on a proposal to control prices by a Consumers' Council. "No butcher could possibly state what is the cost to him of a particular joint. Jt is not a thing that is susceptible to any accurate computation. Moreover, how can you define a joint of meat? If you are to define a joint of.meat, you have to define how the animal is to be cut up, and that involves a limited number of specified standard cuts. You have entirely to eliminate the chance of the customer complaining of any variation in the particular joint which may suit his requirements. Even if you do that and define a joint of meat, who is to say that it is properly cut or that the butcher will put his knife through the imaginary dotted line which should be along the joint, or that it docs not move rather to one side, and perhaps rather widely to one side, in order to . ut the joint in such a way that the more valuable part ol it is larger, and the one sold at the lower price is smaller than it should be. Further, how could you define the joint or the leg of mutton? It may be small, it may be large, it may be young, or it may be old. It may be of good or of poor quality. Therefore, it will have a different value per lb. in relationship to every one of these factors. Similar difficulties will be experienced in regard to green vegetables. The vegetables will vary according to size and quality and the regions from which they come. There will be complications as to rainfall, drought, sunshine, etc., and the effect of these weather conditions on the vegetables. All these things will influence the fair value of these articles. There would have to be an infinite variety of prices, if your prices are fair, and it would be beyond the capacity of a Consumers' Council such as that envisaged in the bill, or any Government department, to control the price of anything of the kind. More than that, in regard to some perishable articles, it would clearly be impossible to keep up-to-date cost prices, because they would vary from day to day."