Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-07-21
BY THOMAS r.. HENRY.

What Americans eat Is largely mat
ter of habit,
The dinner table, says Wells A Sner-
man. specialist in charge of the Fruit
and Vegetable Division of the Bureau of
Agricultural Economics. is loaded with
inherited tastes. prejudices and tradi-
! tons.
Take lettuce, for example. says Mr..
Sherman. Within the past 10 years it
has risen from comparative insignif1-
canoe to the status of the second largest
vegetable crop in the United States,
second only to the potato. And this
despite the fact that few persons really
like it and leave it on their plates
untouched.
The demand for lettuce. he says,
largely grew out of health propaganda
the need for something green in bal
anced ration. But this soon was lost
the supposed health-giving qualities of
the green leaves to anything that was
lettuce"
The health doctrine he says. began
to be preached with vigor at about the
same time as the present hardheaded
type of lettuce began to be grown sue
cessfully and on a large scale in sew
eral of the irrigated districts of the
West. This struck the popular fancy.
and probably would have brought about
tremendous increase in the total con-
sumption had there been no particular
urgency on the part of the dieticians.
Green Leaves Trimmed.
Nov, the. health appeal If strictly
followed would lead us to prefer the
green lettuce to the white, but as
practical matter the green outer leaves
of practically all iceberg lettuce are
trimmed and thrown away, while the
white is served. When the Bureau Of
Agricultural Economics recommended
the first official grades for head lettuce
of the iceberg type it was assumed that
the demand of the trade would make 1t
necessary to ship head lettuce with an
abundant covering of green wrapper
leaves, considered necessary to protect
it from, injury by the crushed ice in
which it was packed.
within a few years however, the
chain stores discovered that they were
retrimming nearly all their lettuce so
that consumers were buying almost ex-
clusiyelv bald heads. Therefore. they
began to demand that the lettuce be
shipped to them more closely trimmed
so that five dozen heads could be packed
in a crate which formerly carried four
dozen. The number of green leaves
shipped with a head of lettuce tends,
broadly speaking, steadily to decline
Retailers tend to trim more and to sell
little more than the bard. white head.
Consumers seem to prefer white lettuce
to green. and by some gross miSconcep-
ton fiatter themselves that they are
eating green stuff, although it shows no
tfnge of green"
Experiments with rats, Mr.. Sherman
said, seem to have shown the value of
lettuce in a diet, but they also have
shown that the rat thriyes just as well
when the lettuce is reduced to a bit the
size of a thumbnail once a week If
he continues. "a rat, with life cycle Of
from 10 to "a months. finds his neces-
sary supply of green stuff in piece of
lettuce leaf as large as a nickel once a
week, may we not raise the question as
to how often the human. with a life
cycle of threescore years and ten, must
take. for the sake of his health. some
thing which does not appeal to him as
daily diet? Statistically a week in
the life of rat is about equal to a year
in the life of any of us. Is it not pos