THE VALUE OF CHEESE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1749, 13 September 1905, Page 15

THE VALUE OF CHEESE.

XT have had much experience in curing cheese, but none of the value of cheese for curing anything else but hunger. For this, however, it is a very effective remedy.” In these words Dr Francis Bond. M.D., medical officer of Health for the Gloucester district, summed up his opinion to a ‘Daily Express” representative on the much-discussed question of cheese being a cure for disease. “Though cheese is no use, so far as my experience goes.” continued Dr Bond, “to cure disease, as an article of diet there is no other food which contains so much nutriment. Meat—even the best sirloin or rump steak— cannot compare in nutritive qualities with an equal weight of well-made, wholemilk cheese. If practising doctors would only give their patients who need abundant nutrition, cheese instead of delusive patent foods, they would find that they would put on flesh in half the time. The fact is that cheese is such a concentrated nutriment that in eating it there is great danger lest one should eat too much. “The remedy for this evil is to ‘dilute? a small quantity of cheese with a Tqrge quantity of some farinaceous foodstuffs, such as bread, or, better still, biscuits or toast, which, by stimulating the flow of saliva, facilitates mastication and promotes digestion. All pressed cheeses, such as the ordinary American, Cheddar, Dutch, Gruyere, and others of the same type are indigestible, though very satisfying to a robust stomach. “All moulded ..cheeses, such as Stilton, Roquefort, and Gorgonzola are verj indigestible in their ripe stage. The gi’een moulds which characterise them effect changes in the constituents of the cheese especially in the fatty matter,' which create products of a highly sapid nature and act very prejudicially on digestion. But-if cheese of this type can be obtained in- its half-ripened condition, when the curd lias been thoroughly peptonised by the curing process, it is not only one of the most nutritious, but also one of the most digestible of foods-”