Food in War Time

by Graham Lusk

So far as is known, taking meat even in large excess is not harmful, but it represents luxury and waste. According to an oral statement by A. E. Taylor, the results of many thousand urinary analyses in Germany during the second year of the war showed about 7 grams of nitrogen excreted, which would correspond to a dietary containing about 45 grams of protein. As a matter of fact, this is the equivalent of the reduced protein dietary of Chittenden, and it is reported that no ill effects can be attributed to it. The flavor of meat is such that it lends itself to the easy preparation of a palatable meal, but this flavor could undoubtedly be as well obtained if the present consumption of meat were cut in two. It is a question of habit, but with the present reduced supply of meat one must adopt new habits. It would be highly desirable if the grain now fed to fatten beef were given to maintain herds of milch cows.

Indulgence in meat is due to the desire for strong flavor. With the increased distribution of wealth, the demand for meat grows. Its consumption by all classes had vastly increased in all prosperous countries prior to the war. It is well, however, to remember that its use has been excessive and unnecessary, and its price can be cut by wholesale voluntary abstinence. The British people have suffered no hardship in the recent reduction of their meat ration.

A British Commission has reported to Parliament that it takes three times as much fodder to produce beef as it does to produce milk or pork of the same food value. Since cows eat chiefly hay and grass and pigs eat grain the cost of the production of a unit value of milk is much less than the cost of the same value in the form of pork. It takes only fifty per cent. more fodder to produce veal than to produce pork. Milk, pork, and veal have long been the established protein-containing foods of nations on the continent of Europe. According to these figures beef should cost in the market twice what veal costs, and yet the butcher charges nearly the same for the two. It would save food for milk production if steers were eaten as veal and not fed up into beef cattle. A suitable tax on all steers over a year old would accomplish this result. If all heifers were developed into milch cows and no cow capable of giving milk in quantity were slaughtered, the country would be placed on a much better basis than at present. It might make beef expensive, but there is every reason why it should be expensive. It would increase the dairy business, which is evidently a need of the times, something for the protection of the welfare of mankind. For it must be remembered that a well-nourished cow during a single year will give in the form of milk as much protein and two and a half times the number of calories as are contained in her own body.

This was written before the publication of the following words of Armsby, the foremost authority on animal nutrition:[2]

Roast pig, to those who like it, is not only a delicacy but a valuable article of diet, but nevertheless, it is possible to pay too high a price for it, and while a proposal to restrict rather than to promote meat production in the present crisis may appear both irrational and unpatriotic it may nevertheless be in the interest of true food economy....

It may be roughly estimated that about 24 per cent. of the energy of grain is recovered for human consumption in pork, about 18 per cent. in milk and only about 3.5 per cent. in beef and mutton. In other words, the farmer who feeds bread grains to his stock is burning up 75 to 97 per cent. of them in order to produce for us a small residue of roast pig, and so is diminishing the total stock of human food....

The task of the stock feeder must be to utilize through his skill and knowledge the inedible products of the farm and factory, such as hay, corn stalks, straw, bran, brewers' and distillers' grains, gluten feed, and the like, and to make at least a fraction of them available for man's use. In so doing he will be really adding to the food supply and will be rendering a great public service. Rather than seek to stimulate live stock husbandry the ideal should be to adjust it to the limits set by the available supply of forage crops and by-product feeding stuffs while, on the other hand, utilizing these to the greatest practicable extent, because in this way we save some of what would otherwise be a total loss....

The hog is the great competitor of man for the higher grades of food, and in swine husbandry as ordinarily conducted we are in danger of paying too much for our roast pig. Cattle and sheep, on the other hand, although less efficient as converters, can utilize products which man can not use and save some of their potential value as human food. From this point of view, as well as on account of the importance of milk to infants and invalids, the high economy of food production by the dairy cow deserves careful consideration, although of course the large labor requirement is a counterbalancing factor.

At any rate, it is clear that at the present time enthusiastic but ill-considered "booming" of live stock production may do more harm than good. If it is desirable to restrict or prohibit the production of alcohol from grain or potatoes on the ground that it involves a waste of food value, the same reason calls for restriction of the burning-up of these materials to produce roast pig. This means, of course, a limited meat supply. To some of us this may seem a hardship. Meat, however, is by no means the essential that we have been wont to suppose and partial deprivation of it is not inconsistent with high bodily efficiency. Certainly no patriotic citizen would wish to insist on his customary allowance of roast pig at the cost of the food supply of his brothers in the trenches.

The United States Department of Agriculture has estimated that a pig that has reached the weight of 150 pounds should be slaughtered, because beyond that weight the cost of the quantity of feed required to maintain the animal is out of proportion to the gain in food value of the pig. One might, therefore, call a pig weighing 150 pounds a maximal economic hog.

Footnotes:

[1] An obsolete plural of pease.

[2] "Roast Pig," Science, 1917, xlvi, 160.