Abstract
IN a lecture at the Royal Institution on May 21 in the series “The Nation's Larder”, Dr. L. H. Lampitt, director and chief chemist of Messrs. J. Lyons and Co., Ltd., discussed “The Manufacture, Preservation and Distribution of Food”. The food industry occupies a position between that of catering by households and catering of the canteen type. The economy to be effected by mass production is obvious because wastage is reduced to a minimum; all waste products are taken and so treated that they have an economic value, labour is reduced and-a very important point-the amount of fuel consumed is considerably less. A striking example is in the baking of cakes. An ordinary gas cooker as operated by a housewife consumes approximately 10 cub. ft. of gas for each lb. of cooked weight of cakes, assuming the housewife was making 4-5 lb. of mixed cakes. In the case of a travelling oven, producing thousands of cakes an hour, the consumption of gas for each lb. of cooked weight is about 1J cub. ft. In the realm of the homely potato, the average housewife loses approximately 22 per cent in peeling and eyeing. In mass treatment, where peeling is carried out by mechanical means, the loss is only 11 per cent.
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The Food Industry in War-time. Nature 145, 807 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145807a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145807a0