Norwich bulletin., 1917-06-08

Written Specially for The Bulletin.
 When you say that a certain thing is worth" so much, just what do you mean?
 Do you mean that the figure you name is it's market price, that it represents the articles real value?
 Take potatoes, for instance. The market price is s3.50 a bushel, we'll say. The bushel contains certain available proteids, fats, etc. Most of it is water which is waste so far as food value is concerned. Only a small proportion is real food, i e. affords material for nutrition. At s3.50 bushel a pound of protein in potatoes will cost not far from S3.3o, and thousand calories of energy will cost about 19 cents.
 With wheat four at s15 barrel. pound of protein in flour will cost about 70 cents and thousand ca1ories of energy less than cents.
 With dry beans at p cents quart, the pound of protein in them will cost about dollar and the thousand calor- les of energy about Is cents.
 Don't you see from these compar1- sons that there is a mighty big differ ence between the real worth of. bushel of potatoes. for example, and their market price?
 The actual value, i. e., the true worth" of any food is proportioned to the amount of nutrition it supplies You may like" one sort of dish bet ter than another, but your liking or non liking does not measure the food value of either.
 For another Illustration: a pound of protein and a thousand calories of energy in porterhouse steak at 35 cents a pound cost you about 32 cents. The same pound of protein and the same amount of energy in skim milk at cents a quart cost you about F cents; less than half as much.
 One of the by-products of skim milk is cottage cheese" Hoard's Dairy man asserts that pound of cottage cheese contains as much protein as a pound and a quarter of sirloin steak or a pound and a half of pork chops, and is "a cheap food at 15 cents pound'
 For many years expert chemists and food specialists have been work ing away with test after test and ex- pertinent after experiment 10 ma out and set down for our use-yours and mine-the exact food value of the va rious materials which are the source of our dinners.
 The results of their labors have been tabulated and painstakingly explain ed. They are free to any one for the asking, and are so simple that it is impossible to imagine any intelligent
 housekeeper failing to understand them.
 Just at present, when the Thigh cost of living" is the dominant topic in almost every home, it should be a propitious time for housewives and house caterers everywhere to study up the food situation and learn the diffrences which too often obtain be- tween the real worth of supplies and the prices charged for them in the markets.
 It is quite conceivable that one fam fly whose purveyor knows the differ ence between worth" and price" of different foods may have not only a cheaper table but a better and more wholesome one than the family whose purchaser goes it blind and assumes that, the more a thing costs, the better it probably is.
 Vet that idea, the belief that price is always the euage of value, is so in grained in the American mind that not even the most sangu1ne phllosopllef can expect or hope for it's abolition except in individual and special cases.
 Everywhere one goes. no matter ln what department of life or industry, he continually bumps up against that that thing must be wocsn more if it costs more.
 The other day one of my spark piugs refused to work, and I stopped at a garage for a new one. Those 1 in my cylinder cost fifty cents apiece | The garage keeper had others of the | same make but also showed coupe | at seventy-f1ve cents and a dollar, re- spectively. Those plugs you have are | good ones at the price," he remarked, l but of course, these others are bet 1 ter. The higher the price, the better l the plug"
 So, as "fier," I invested in the | seventy five cent plug. It went bad.I in less than twenty miles. Which was l a little worse record than I ever made l by any other plug at any price, before. |
 It cost more but really was worth l less,
 l read, occasionally, of some girl | getting a hundred thousand or a half