6 FEBRUARY 1948, Page 5

When the New Yorker pronounces something to be good I

conclude that it is good. That goes (as the New Yorker would say) for MPF. The initials stand for Multi-Purpose Food, a compound based on soya bean but containing a good deal else, which was devised by a California professor and exploited, not for profit but for the benefit of starving nations, by a California restaurateur named Clifford Clinton. In the last eighteen months the Meals for Millions Foundation, which Mr. Clinton created, has supplied five million meals to thirty-two relief agencies, which have distributed them in twenty-one different countries; theAmerican Friends' Service Committee, which can be taught nothing about practical relief, has distributed two million in Japan. A ten-meal can weighs a pounds and costs 3o cents—say Is. 6d., or rather less. M.P.F. does not meet the whole needs of man ; it is meant to supplement rather than replace completely a starvation-diet. But there are clearly con- siderable possibilities in it.