31 OCTOBER 1931, Page 13

Why do we drink less milk than other peoples ?

One reason is an astonishingly wide and obstinate belief that there cannot be as much support in a liquid (though some make an excep- tion on behalf of beer !) as in a solid. In the country at any rate soup is altogether scorned. It is regarded as a sort of useless wash. The French peasant takes infinite care in pre- paring soup, will go to the trouble (as I once found) to soak lettuce leaves in the water for the sake of the extraction of the vitamines, though the word was unknown to the cook. This contrast of belief in soup in peasant France and in England is founded not at all on climate or season. An accidental preju- dice and perhaps a racial laziness seem to be the sole reasons for the English contempt for soup ; and this contempt is extended to milk, because it is a liquid, not a solid. Our dicta- tors perhaps would persuade the schoolgirls to learn the meaning of good cooking as well as the value of good milk.