THE FOOD QUESTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2106, 5 July 1894, Page 50

THE FOOD QUESTION.

In discussing the food question, the Spectator has some sensible remarks to offer: — "The educated (ifc says) have only glimmering ideas as to what their children should eat — half of them till a few years ago had a sort of horror of sugar, one of the most nourishing of all subatances — and the uneducated have positively no ideas upon the subject. They just eat, and give their children what they can get. Hardly anything in the world is as nourishing as lentils, which may be sold much cheaper than bread, and eaten too, with dripping, an invaluable combination. Millet, on which the big races of India grow co tall and strong, might, if there were a demand for it in Europe be far cheaper than wheat ; and so might • cornflour,' on which Kentuckians, the strongest race in America, are bred, though that requires mixture with a less nitrogenous diet. Of course there are plenty of prejudices about food — some years ago the Suffolk labourers would not touch fish because it is used as manure — but they are none of them insuperable. Most of them arise from difficulties about cooking, or from the sheer dislike to anything new, which for years checked the Bale of the tomato and the plantain. Now everybody eats tomatcev, and if plantains could be reduced to their proper price, say sixpence a bunch, no commercial fleet would bo abls to cope with the demand. Of course, also, likiug must; be considered ; but liking is, for the moßt part, only a matter of use and wont, and everything good is sweet if we eat it for a month. No instinct operates against any healthy diet, exoept for a time, like the Indian instinct against meat, which many converts cannot at first get rid of ; and the path therefore is tolerably clear. The dootors

have only to reduce their knowledge on the subject to formulas easily understanded of the people, and it would spread little by little downward from the educated, just as the knowledge of sanitary laws is now spreading and will spread."