The Nation's Larder and the Housewife's Part Therein

Abstract

“THE Nation's Larder” offers to the inquiring housewife much food for thought, perhaps not very easy for her assimilative capacity. A preface by the President of the Royal Society and a letter from the Minister of Food stimulate an appetite for the substantial courses to follow. It is agreed that in days long past the British peasant's larder was most satisfactorily stocked with a few simple sustaining foods, dairy produce, coarsely ground meal, potatoes, green and root vegetables. In recent years the larder was more variously but less adequately filled, and the nation's health and teeth have Suffered from the consumption of sophisticated foodstuffs. War enforces a reversion towards a debased form of peasant's diet, debased because the bread and cereals of which it substantially consists have been deprived of essential ingredients. The majority of the British public are content with white bread, and the few who want wholemeal now have difficulty in getting it. There is an official scheme to reinforce white flour with synthetic vitamin B, (aneurin) and calcium, but that will not restore the protein, the iron and other minerals, and vitamins A, B₂, and E removed in milling.

The Nation's Larder and the Housewife's Part Therein

A set of Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May and June 1940, by Prof. J. C. Drummond, Maj.-Gen. Sir Robert McCarrison, Sir John Orr, Sir Frederick Keeble, Dr. L. H. Lampitt, Prof. V. H. Mottram, Dr. J. C. Spence.; with a Supplement by Dr. Franklin Kidd. Pp. xii + 146. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1940.) 2s. 6d. net.