Science in Public Affairs 



FOOD 



No such difference of opinion exists as to the 

 serious degeneration which may be, and in some 

 cases has been, caused by improper or insufficient 

 food. Experts unite in condemning the excessive 

 use of tea and bread in the diet of the people. 

 Tea and bread and jam, the staple food of vast 

 numbers of the children, is a very bad substitute 

 for oatmeal and milk ; and tinned foods have 

 brought evil with them by displacing home cook- 

 ing. It would almost seem that cooking is becom- 

 ing a lost art in England. This is due in many 

 places to the mothers going out to work in fac- 

 tories, and is one of the serious evils in modern 

 industrial life ; but we are also told that " a large 

 proportion of British housewives are tainted with 

 incurable laziness and distaste for the obligations 

 of domestic life." 1 Nor does this apply to the 

 poor only, for we find Mrs. Huth Jackson, in the 

 Nineteenth Century for August 1905, saying, "To- 

 day the English lady is the worst housekeeper in 

 the world. . . . Housekeeping should come before 

 art or philanthropy or athletics. . . . The nation 

 is sick. . . . Drugs are of little avail . . . look to 

 the only alternative cures . . . viz., diet or the 

 knife. . . . Let us pray that we may escape the 

 knife, and reform our every-day diet in a simple 

 and practical way/' 



Heavy tea -drinking is the cause of great 



1 Report, p. 40. 

 28 



