( 116 ) 



the art of cooking as he knows it to the scientific maintenance 

 ration of a hog fills him with dismay. 



Is There an Ill-Fed Third? 



Some people think that the economic royalists and the 

 princes of privilege who live on the Park Avenues and the 

 Gold Coasts of New York and Chicago eat more food than 

 the downtrodden third. Whenever one of the downtrodden 

 third sees a picture, conceived in Hollywood, of the banquet 

 table of a Gold Coaster, this conclusion is strongly reinforced. 



Furthermore, students of consumer habits have made sta- 

 tistical studies of the question and almost invariably report 

 that the wealthy eat more food than the poor, and conclude 

 therefore that the poor get too little. Many of these studies 

 are based on the volume of dollar purchases. Unquestionably 

 the wealthy spend more dollars for food than do the poor, 

 but they buy more cellophane, more delivery and other serv- 

 ices; and strangely enough, they frequently require more 

 credit. It does not follow from dollar comparisons that they 

 eat more actual food. 



Some studies, being more realistic, concern themselves 

 with the volume of purchases in pounds rather than in dol- 

 lars. Here again it usually appears that the wealthy buy 

 more actual food than the poor. But still it cannot be con- 

 cluded that the rich eat more than the poor. Much of this 

 extra food is fed to the cook, the chauffeur, or the poor rela- 

 tives. Some is trimmed away or left on the plate. The final 

 answer to this controversial question awaits the ambitious 

 researcher who will select one hundred of the wealthy and 

 one hundred of the downtrodden third, weigh them before 

 and after each meal for a year, and add up his results. He may 

 well find that the rich eat less than the poor, since they are 

 less active. 



