PASTEURISED MILK

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24252, 18 April 1942, Page 4

PASTEURISED MILK

[ Sir,—Your scientific correspondent is on sound ground in condemning the notion that milk loses some purely imaginary "life germ" when it is pasteurised. . . Lord Horder, the eminent physician, had this to say in his Conway Memorial Lecture, "Obscurantism," delivered id 1938:—"There are folk who object to eating what they term 'dead food.' All food, they say, should be alive —not live animals, because these folk are ; I believe, mostly vegetarians—but live vegetables. We know that fresh vegetables have valuable nutrient properties which may be lost by cooking. Therefore it is useful to eat a certain amount of vegetables in the raw state, such as salads. "But now comes the obscurant idea that the fact that the vegetables are alive gives them some other and mvstical value. In some way thev are more acceptable to the principle o£ Life—with a capital L. But in the process of digestion all live food is killed;' it is also broken up by ferments and bv bacteria into a. few basic constituent chemical substances before these can be assimilated. "All this goes on in the alimentary tract, which is outside the body proper. So that the 'live' element in food is lost long before it can be made use of in the manner supposed. And so this romance boils down to the fact which we all accept—that fresh food is better than stale food. But that is too simple and too well known to carry a cult." G-