WHAT FAMILIES OVERSPEND ON

Te Ao Hou, June 1961, Page 64

WHAT FAMILIES OVERSPEND ON (1) Tinned Foods: Maori families are great buyers of tinned foods. As well as being costly, they are mainly of low nutrient value. How often do we find a family buying two tins of corned meat, costing 8/8, from which they make a stew. How much easier, cheaper and of greater food value it is to buy 1 ½lb of blade bone steak of exactly half the cost. Tinned Fish: They should be encouraged to buy fresh fish and fish heads to fry or make soup. Tinned Milk: The sale of sweet condensed milk and Ideal Milk in the town is high. The better and cheaper way of buying milk is full cream dried milk powder for the younger members of the family and dried skim milk powder for the older members. Biscuits and Cake: Generally speaking, the Maori is not fond of rich fruit cake, but is a heavy buyer of plain biscuits and cake. A pound of plain biscuits costs 3/-, whereas a 21b block of home-made chocolate cake (without eggs) would cost in the vicinity of 1/6 to 2/-. A bad habit among the Maori families is to buy from day to day, with the result that, being low in stores at the weekend, they frequent the milk-bars. It is only natural to expect that the cost of food items purchased in the weekend from the milk-bars is higher than the purchases from the grocer during the week. For this reason they should be encouraged to make out shopping lists, and as much as possible limit their buying to two or three days a week.