WHY APPLE SAUCE WITH GOOSE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 24, Issue 18, 7 March 1913, Page 7

WHY APPLE SAUCE WITH GOOSE.

“ 4AND BREAD WITH BUTTER? Not so many years ago prison diet consisted exclusively of skilly, bread, and meat, the latter usually lean. The actual weight of food given in the course of the day was quite sufficient to keep an ordinary man in health, yet prisoners complained that they were starved. The infirmaries were full, the _ general health was bad, and it was found difficult to get anything like a day’s work out of the men.

Presently it was' realised that the men’s complaints were genuine. The human body is an engine which requires mixed fuel, and the prison fare was not sufficiently varied to keep prisoners in health. It was especially deficient in fat, and that accounted for some men devouring tallow candles and doap.

NO FAT ;. NO HEALTH. Gradually a change was .brought about. Cocoa was given, a small amount of fat bacon and of butter. Those engaged in hard outdoor work were allowed cheese. The result has been a miraculous change. Watch a gang at work on the farms at one of our great convict establishments, and you will see at once that the men are thoroughly fit. Our own sense of taste > tells us that we require mixed food. Bread-and-mllk contains practically all the useful nutriment that anyone needs ; yet’ just Imagine hqing condemned to nothing but bread-and-milk for even a single week.

Dry bread is a very dull food, hut bread-and-butter, on the other hand, is appreciated by everybody. Why ? Because the butter contains two elements which bread lacks—namely, casein and fat. Just consider how many dishes there are in which two ingredients are always coupled together. Bacon and* eggs, for instance, where the nitrogen and fat of the bacon supplement the albumen of tho egg. With corned beef the palate demands cabbage. The fat of the corned beef goes excellently with the albumenoids and cellulose contained in the cabbage.

There is very little food value in any fruit, with the one ‘exception of the banana;; 'but Nature ,has stored up in-them saline substances, fruit salts, which are most valuable aids to keeping man .in health. Rice and jnost other cereals have immense food value, but none of these fruit salts, and so we find it not only pleasant but healthful to combine the two, and eat stewed fruit with rice or jam with bread., AID FOR DIGESTION.

The person who cats no fruit or vegetables almost invariably suffers from blood disorders, and in these days of scientific dieting most make a point of eating fruit or vegetables at/least twice a day. Some kinds of meat are in themselves so rieh that the palate instinctively craves for .something to subdue their fattiness.

That is why we eat apple-sauce with roast pork or roast goose. The malic acid which gives the apple its pleasant sharpness fights against the fcich fat and reduces it. Applesauce actually makes rich meat more easy to digest. Chicken, on the other hand, being very lean, is made not only more palatable, ibut a more useful fuel for the body by being eaten with ham. It is plain, then, that the desire for the apparently curious mixtures which we crave is not dictated merely by greediness, but is founded on good common-sense.