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(a) Boiled suet pudding.—2 oz. flour, ⅔oz. suet, ½oz. dried fruit, syrup or jam
or 1 oz. fresh fruit and £ oz. sugar.
(b)Baked pastry.—2 oz. flour, ⅔oz. dripping, ½oz. jam or 1 oz. fresh fruit and
¼ oz. sugar.
(c) Milk pudding.—⅓ pint of pudding per child. The pudding should contain
the following proportions:—2 oz. cereal, viz.: rice, tapioca, or barley, ½ pint milk,
½ pint water, 2 oz. sugar, 1 oz. suet chopped very finely.
(d) Batter pudding.—1 oz. flour, ¼ egg, ¼ gill milk, ¼ gill water, salt, 1 oz. syrup,
sugar or jam or fresh fruit and ¼ oz. sugar.
(e) Orange pudding.—1 orange cut into slices, ½oz. sugar, ½gill milk custard.
(When this pudding is served a dumpling or a piece of Yorkshire pudding must be
served with the first course.)
(f)Any other pudding of equal food value may be served.
General rules:—Meat must be served three or four times a week. Soup must
be served only once a week. Fish may be served once a week in lieu of meat. Cheese
pie or pudding may be served occasionally instead of soup. Haricot beans may be
served once or twice a week instead of green vegetables. Fresh fruit should be used
in the making of puddings and pies whenever it is cheap. Potatoes baked in dripping
should be served at least once a week. The meals should be varied as much as
possible.
Another most valuable means of dealing with the under-nourished child is the
provision of milk and cod-liver oil in school.
These are given only on the advice of the medical officers and the children
concerned are kept under medical supervision, their weights being carefully taken
and consideration being given to their nutritional state at regular intervals. Too
great value cannot be attached to this most important sphere of activity.
The number of milk meals for the week ended 24th January, 1924, was 19,824
(free or part payment), and 45,911 (full payment), total 65,735, while 2,726 (free
or part payment) and 5,891 (full payment) doses of cod-liver oil were also given.
Nor does this represent the total amount of milk and cod-liver oil supplied, as many
head teachers are running milk-clubs and making independent arrangements with
dairies. Some milk meals obtained for non-necessitous children from the official
contractor are included in the returns, others are not, and meals obtained from
dairies outside the contract are rarely returned, so that the statistics are incomplete.
Although milk meals are largely recommended by the school doctor, the size
of the list of children receiving milk meals at particular schools depends to a great
extent upon the opinion of the head teachers and the care committees as to the
utility and desirableness of giving milk in school. The number of children seen at
routine medical inspection who, prima facie, require milk in school on medical
grounds is small. The size of the milk list depends almost entirely on the zeal and
enthusiasm of the teachers and care committee workers in seeking out suitable
children and bringing them before the doctor as special cases for consideration.
When restrictions were imposed by the Board of Education (circular No. 1261,
17th May, 1922), it was felt that more care and consideration must be given to the
question of the ill-nourished child and that it would be advantageous if the milk
cases were studied more carefully from the nutritional point of view, to ascertain
whether the mere giving of milk was sufficient in every case of malnutrition and to
make certain that children in one district no longer in need of milk should not be
receiving it to the exclusion of children in other districts who required it urgently.
As a result the doctors found many children obtaining free milk whose physical
condition no longer warranted it on purely medical grounds.
One of the difficulties arises from the fact that it has been customary to place
children on the dinner list when necessitous irrespective of their physical condition,
but in general only on the milk list when their physical condition or their health
demanded it upon medical grounds. Some care committees desire to place children