Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1917 — AN OUNCE OF MEAT [ARTICLE]

AN OUNCE OF MEAT

“Many a Mickle Makes a Muckle."

An ounce of edible meat—lean meat, fat and lean, suet or fat trimmed from steak, chops, or roast —seems hardly worth saving. Many households take just this view of the matter —do not trouble to put such an insignificant scrap into the Ucebox or soup pot —do not bother to save for cookery a spoonful or two of drippings or a tiny bit of suet or fat. Yet if every one of the 20,000,000 American families on the average wastes each day only one ounce of edible meat or fat, it means a daily waste of 1,250,000 pounds of animal food —456,000,000 pounds of valuable animal food a year, according to statisticians of the United States department of agriculture. At average dressed weights, it would take the gross weight of over 875,000,QOO steers, or over 3,000,000 hogs—bones and all—to provide This weight of meat or fat for each garbage pail or kitchen sink. If the bones and butcher’s waste are eliminated, these figures would be Increased to 1,150,000 cattle and 3,700,000 hogs. Or, again, if the waste were distributed according to the per capita consumption of the various meats (excluding bones), it would use up a combined herd of over 538,000 beef animals, 291,000 calves, over 625,000 sheep and lamfys, and over 2,132,000 hogs. j Millions of tons of feed and hay, the grass from vast pastures and the labor of armies of cattlemen and butchers also would be scrapped by this meat-waste route. Waste of meat or fat is Inexcusable, say the government experts. Every bit of lean meat can be used in soups, stews, or in combination with cereals; every spoonful of fat can be employed in cookery; every bit of drippings and gravy can be saved so easily and used to add flavor and nourishment to other dishes.