PROPER FEEDING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19137, 5 October 1936, Page 5

PROPER FEEDING

AND WISE SPENDING BRITISH M.P.'S ADVICE (From a. Special Correspondent) LONDON, Sept. 12, Sir John Haslnm, M.P. for Bolton, and an old friend of New Zealand, has a word 1 of good advice, for northern housewives in a recent letter to the press. Commenting on an official report that a proportion of mothers and children iu Lancashire were suffering from insufficient consumption of milk and milk products, lie says: "While poverty is undoubtedly one of the principal causes: of many workingclass parents not obtaining a sufficiency of these foods for themselves and their children, I would point out that plentiful supplies of two of the most essential milk foods—namely, butter and cheesecan be purchased to-day at prices within the reach of the great majority of the population. "New Zealand butter and cheese, for example, arc being retailed at prices which are actually below the pre-war level. Yet our average weekly consumption of butter is no more than half-a-pound a head and of cheese as little, as three ounces a week!

"The fact that a fully adequate diet, including generous supplies of dairy products, can be provided at a minimum cost, has been proved conclusively by the National Council of Social Service and allied organisations in their administration of a chain of seaside holiday camps, to which 50,000 children from the distressed areas are being sent this summer.

"The bolter ration in these camps is three, times the average national eonsumption, and the milk and cheese ration is correspondingly high. Remarkable improvements, as a result of this dietary, are reported in the physical condition of the children, many of whom come from Lancashire and other northern counties.

"All of these considerations, I submit, impel one. to the conclusion that proper feeding is very much a matter of wise spending. This is particularly true in view of the. curious willingness of northern housewives generally to pay higher prices for foreign butter, despite the cheapness and more constant nutritive value of the Dominion variety."