"What food should I prepare for lunch?" This is the question forever repeated by the housewife, who often feels that the task of running the household laid upon her shoulders would be much lightened if the matter of deciding on the dishes were entrusted to someone else. But this burden is not easily lifted from one pair of shoulders to be placed on another. It is possible, of course, to draw up lists of dishes for every meal, but these are rarely adequate to the purposes required as they stand. The foodstuffs prescribed may not be found in the market, or the family may not like them, or the list may contain conflicting dishes that must be dropped. And so we see that the problem remains unsolved. The truth is that the person charged with preparing the family's food bears a responsibility that is hard to escape.
The question "What food should I prepare for lunch?" does not carry the sense of a choice between two things - preparing something or preparing nothing at all - as is the case in the circumstances of savage life or in states of abject poverty. Rather, this question indicates a perplexity in selecting dishes from quantities of food more plentiful than man has ever seen before. If only a few kinds of foodstuffs were on hand, the matter would be simple and quickly settled. The real meaning of the question is this: "What new foodstuffs can be obtained, from which to make dishes tasty to the palate and attractive to the eye, for those who cannot possibly be truly hungry?"
It is comparatively easy, however, to draw up lists of dishes for the various meals in such a way that these lists are attractive, if no account is taken of the prices of the foodstuffs required or of the amount of labor needed to prepare them and bring them to the table. The great danger, where much money is spent on food, is excessive refinement in the preparation of dishes - a thing which is not merely counted an art, but which tempts one to eat to the point of surfeit; and that is one way of wasting food to no benefit whatever.
For most people, price is an important factor in the question of food, since somewhere between a quarter of the family income and, at times, half of it must be set aside for buying foodstuffs. The smaller the income, the larger the proportion of it spent on food. Fortunately, there is no essential connection between the nutritive value of foods and their prices, short of the bare minimum standard of foodstuffs. The
two words "nourishing" and "costly" are therefore not synonyms in the true sense. In fact, some foodstuffs of great nutritive worth are cheaper in price than various other foodstuffs. Price alone, then, is not to be relied upon by the housewife in deciding what food she should prepare for her family. She needs to know some of the factors that affect food prices, so that she can choose wisely - especially if she is not a woman of means.
Factors That Affect the Prices of Foodstuffs
The amount of labor, and the cost of the materials used to produce foodstuffs, are among the chief factors affecting food prices. Potatoes are cheap because their cultivation and production do not call for a great expenditure of manual labor. When the weather is favorable, so that every fisherman can catch a large quantity of fish, the price in the market is low; but if the weather is bad and the fishermen have little luck, the price of fish rises, at times exorbitantly. And if a season of drought happens to occur and, because of it, sufficient pasture for the livestock runs short, meat prices rise and its quality declines.
To the prices of foodstuffs carried from distant places must be added the costs of transport, as well as the cost of the quantities of these foodstuffs lost through shipment, part of them spoiling from the long time that passes over them. Thus the housewife pays for food transported from far away a heavy price - double what she ought to pay - because a large part of the shipment spoils on its way from its place of origin to the market. And so we see that the prices of dried and hard foodstuffs, such as grains, potatoes, and onions, which are not damaged by transport and do not quickly spoil when kept a long time, are lower than the prices of fruits and vegetables, which are liable to damage and rapid spoilage however much care is lavished on preserving them.
There are also many foodstuffs sold at high prices on account of their outstanding qualities that stir the appetite - color, aroma, flavor, and sometimes shape. The big red apple is more attractive than the small green one, even if the flavor of the latter is finer than that of the former. Olive oil is preferred to peanut oil and other oils on account of the special flavor that distinguishes it, although it does not surpass the other oils in nutritive value. We are all inclined to believe that all the foods we love are good for us, and their taste and appearance help us to love or to hate them. But from the purely nutritional point of view, these two matters are secondary in the eyes of the wise and understanding housewife, who can distinguish between true nutritive value and the other factors, and so knows well how the money should be spent in buying the nourishing and beneficial foods her family needs.