State Nutritionist during World War II
Muriel’s appointment to the New Zealand Medical Research Council (NZMRC) in 1938 came with a more specialised remit than her Board of Health appointment. Established in 1937 under the leadership of the director general of health, the council consisted of two members of the faculty of medicine of the University of Otago, two representatives of the British Medical Association, two departmental officers, the director general of health and two members nominated by the minister of health, Peter Fraser. Charged with identifying the most pressing national health problems, the council set up committees on nutrition, thyroid disease and hydatid disease. Of these, nutrition research received the most funding: £800 per year. Fraser ‘thought that what had been done in connection with the Council was the most advanced step ever taken in the Dominion in connection with the prevention of disease’.1
The Nutrition Research Committee
In some other countries nutrition research was largely the province of the agricultural sector and associated training institutions. In New Zealand it was led by the health and allied professions. The 1938 inaugural Nutrition Research Committee (NRC) of the NZMRC (also referred to as the Nutrition Committee) consisted of a formidable group of New Zealand’s research elite: Professors John Malcolm, Charles Hercus and Elizabeth Gregory, Dr Michael Watt and Muriel.2 As chair, Malcolm drew on forty years of experience in nutrition research. Muriel’s great respect for and loyalty toward him were based on his dedication and high ethical standards. In this role, she later wrote, he contributed ‘for a decade this highly-qualified though unpaid service work for the community … He refused to have anything to do with a monetary grant tagged with a condition which prevented freedom to state the scientific truth.’3
Charles Hercus, dean of the Otago Medical School, was a strong public health advocate. Since his appointment as professor of public health and bacteriology in 1921, Hercus had stressed the importance of social and preventive medicine, and he did important early work in surveying goitre among schoolchildren.4 He also instituted a programme whereby students undertook research projects toward a public health thesis as part of the medical degree.
Elizabeth Gregory, Muriel’s fellow postgraduate in the Biochemistry Department at University College in London, had become a lecturer in chemistry and nutrition at the University of Otago’s School of Home Science on her return to New Zealand in 1931. She went on to become professor and dean of the School of Home Science in 1941.
Michael Watt was director general of health and chair of the NZMRC. Watt’s distinguished career in public health administration began in 1920 as the first director of the newly reformed Division of Public Health. In 1930 he became director general of health, and the establishment of the NZMRC in 1937 was one of the major achievements of his directorship.5 The year following its inception, the council established its ‘main brain child’, the Nutrition Research Committee, which oversaw the Nutrition Research Department (NRD).6
Muriel Bell was the beating heart of the Nutrition Research Department during its existence from 1938 to 1964. Her unique background, combining medical training, physiology, hospital pathology and nutrition research, shaped the work and profile of the department, which Charles Burns later described as ‘the main target of [her] devotion’.7
The Physiology Department of the Otago Medical School was a natural place for the NZMRC to base the NRD, since both Bell and Malcolm were staff members. These links fostered collaboration with medical colleagues and provided training opportunities for nutrition researchers. The nearby School of Home Science proved a fruitful source of graduates for Muriel’s research department. Master’s degree recipients in home science were trained in biochemical techniques to a very high standard under Professor Ann Strong and later Elizabeth Gregory. Bell’s nutrition research workers played a key role in distinguishing nutrition research from other research departments. These combined attributes of the department fired Muriel’s fierce loyalty to Dunedin as the home of nutrition research in New Zealand.
In addition, Otago Medical School had the advantage of being able to house research departments and thus avoid creating ‘a medical research institute out of touch with medical education and future medical research workers’.8 On his appointment as dean of the medical school in 1937, Hercus was immensely keen to foster internationally renowned research. While the school had a strong reputation as a centre for training general practitioners, its research had so far ‘failed to attract attention because it was not very original or not very significant’.9 There were exceptions, such as the neuroanatomy of the tuatara, the fieldwork on goitre and work on the pathology of the thyroid gland. The interconnectedness of Otago’s research units and government departments reflected the common goal of improving public health.
Dietary surveys
One of the legacies of the Depression was poor nutrition, and national and international efforts to remedy the situation called for extensive dietary surveys. Previous statistics had relied on yearbook records of national food consumption, but closer inspection proved that these were often misleading. For example, the yearbooks showed that New Zealanders ate too much meat, sugar, cakes and confectionery and too little fish, raw fruit, raw vegetables, milk, eggs, unrefined cereals and cheese. Records of national consumption of foodstuffs alone, however, did not contain enough detail or analysis to shed light on potential deficiencies that resulted from the national consumption figures. As Muriel explained, ‘We had to know not only what kind of foods, but how much of them [people] actually ate. This involved visiting homes, explaining how to keep records of foods purchased; foods were weighed before and after meals, so that we would know the amount trimmed from the food before cooking, and the amount of bone and scraps left on the plates.’10 Through dietary surveys, women became creators of scientific knowledge, not simply consumers or educators.
By the beginning of 1939 researchers had completed dietary surveys of basic-wage earners in the tramway and boot and shoe industries in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The researchers paid particular attention to the energy, protein, calcium, phosphorus and iron content of the diet and compared the results to standard dietary recommendations.
The most important discovery was the low intake of calcium, resulting from low consumption of milk and cheese and a preference for butter and cream, which were higher in fats than in milk solids. To increase calcium intake, the NRC recommended improvements in dairy production, government dairy subsidies and the establishment of town milk councils. This combined approach was necessary to make milk and cheese both affordable and popular and to make them a regular component of the New Zealand diet.
Another important nutritional defect that came to light in the surveys was iron deficiency, which was more common than expected among urban workers. Yearbook records had led to the assumption that the intake of meat, the main dietary source of iron, was high, but this was the case in rural areas only.
The dietary surveys provided a useful basis for future research, and justification for such schemes as milk in schools.11 The studies also proved immensely valuable for determining the allocations of foods for rationing and for nutritional planning and education during World War II.
Keen to foster a positive relationship with the medical profession, the Nutrition Research Committee distributed a questionnaire to doctors about their patients’ diets in 1939. It contained questions on the prenatal diet of expectant mothers, diet during lactation, infant feeding and the diet of pre-adolescent children. The department circulated the questionnaire to 700 doctors nationwide, of whom 47 per cent responded. While nutrition researchers did not anticipate that ‘the answers would give adequate scientific basis for determining a clear line of future work … the questionnaire [was] valuable if only to get into touch with any who are keen to collaborate or who know of places where experiments have been or could be done’. Among the respondents, the issue of greatest concern was dental caries. Other concerns included goitre, rickets, gastric and duodenal ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, constipation, diabetes and hypertension.12
In addition to work on calcium deficiency in children, the NRC’s plans in 1939 included research into dietetic imbalances, such as the high consumption of butter; studies on vitamins A, B and C; diseases resulting from deficiencies of cobalt, fluoride, manganese, zinc and copper; projects comparing the nutritional status of children fed with the infant formula devised by the Truby King, the founder of Plunket, with other bottle-fed children; and joint work with the Goitre Committee on iodine metabolism.13 The NRC always intended that experimental work on humans and animals would form an important part of its work, and to these ends ‘the service of a trained physiologist, who had a thorough training as a biochemist and who had proved his ability to do research on nutrition would be necessary’.14 Other lines of investigation included research on bread and flour, and dietary studies in farming and Māori areas. With the outbreak of World War II, however, the department narrowed its focus to the challenge of supplying the necessary intake of vitamins in the face of food shortages.
The school milk scheme
The introduction of milk in schools by the Health Department in 1936 signified a real advance in public health as well as a boost to the country’s agricultural sector. Because the Depression had lowered the overseas price of dairy products, a scheme to offer every New Zealand schoolchild half a pint (300ml) of milk a day was of benefit to children and farmers alike. Initially, however, the scheme was not embraced by the dairy industry, whose interests had centred on securing prices and quotas of butter and cheese for export to Britain.15 The idea that increasing the domestic consumption of milk could stabilise the industry found little resonance.
The scheme met with various other objections, accurately predicted by an advisor to the minister of finance, the economist W.B. Sutch: ‘We shall be told that milk is a carrier of germs; that milk is not a perfect food; that it is not the business of the State to guarantee the minimum standards of physical existence; that it cannot be done in a big school; that secondary schools lads will either not require it, or will think that it is a food only for the very young; and probably the most basic reason will be advanced last – “that we don’t like milk anyway”. ’16 Sutch, like Muriel Bell and many others who had witnessed the widespread socioeconomic hardship of the Depression, looked to industry and trade to secure a stable economic future for New Zealanders. Some favoured a voluntary rather than nationally mandated scheme, asserting ‘that it is neither seemly nor desirable to look to the State for every variety of assistance’.17
Although milk had not previously been seen as an important food for school-age children, a consensus on its benefits was growing. The League of Nations Technical Commission on Nutrition advocated an allowance of one litre of milk for a child or adolescent as sufficient for providing the protein, calcium and vitamins needed for growth. In a study that greatly impressed educational and nutritional authorities, Dr Harold Corry Mann, an employee of the British Medical Research Council, had reported in 1926 that a ration of milk promoted increased growth, vitality and liveliness in boys at a British boarding school.18 Dental experts had previously believed that milk encouraged dental decay by leaving a film on teeth, but by the 1930s they had begun to focus instead on the ill effects of sugar on teeth and began extolling milk’s virtues, including its effectiveness in forestalling a ‘visit to the nearby sweet shop during recess’.19
The proposal had the support of various charitable and welfare organisations. School milk schemes were already operating on a local basis, one example being the New Zealand Smith Family Joyspreaders, which advocated milk in schools in Wellington as early as 1933. Its board consisted of powerful politicians: Minister of Finance George Forbes and Prime Minister Gordon Coates served as president and vice president in 1935. Health Department publications during the early 1930s promoted the importance of milk in bringing up ‘healthy and virile’ children.20 The League of Health of New Zealand Youth and the Sunlight League campaigned vigorously for a national milk scheme for children.21 The idea received a significant public boost when George Bernard Shaw, visiting New Zealand in 1934, suggested in a radio broadcast that milk could be supplied free to schoolchildren.22
The establishment of the scheme was, however, largely due to the findings of one north Canterbury high school teacher, H.C.D. Somerset. Noticing that his pupils often appeared fatigued, he published a report showing the need for improvement in children’s diets. He ascribed the malnutrition that he observed not to poverty but to the lack of knowledge about the nutritional superiority of milk to cream and the importance of vegetables in the diet.23 An early example of a dietary survey among New Zealand school children, it led the way for the kind of work later carried out by the Nutrition Research Department and brought the shortcomings of teenage children’s diets to the attention of educational authorities.
New Zealand inaugurated its national school milk scheme in 1936. Schoolchildren received their first deliveries of milk in 1937. By 1940 daily milk delivery was available to 189,553 children, 67 per cent of all those in school. The following year more than 81 per cent of schoolchildren received milk daily; an educational journal noted that milk in schools had become an ‘integral part of the school routine and teachers themselves know that the effect of this daily ration is a definite and in some cases substantial appreciation in the physical well-being of the children’.24 In isolated areas where it was not possible to deliver fresh milk to schools each day, there were provisions for offering cocoa or alternative drinks containing malted milk powder.
Muriel’s strong and enduring relationship with the dairy industry began with the school milk scheme. Her particular contribution to its success was to ensure that the milk contained maximum flavour and nutrients. Because the New Zealand dairy production until then had focused on supplying milk for commercial purposes, which did not necessarily meet the government standards of fitness for human consumption, making milk available to all schoolchildren nationwide was an onerous task. Standards of hygiene on farms and in processing required significant improvement, and safe and efficient methods of distributing milk to schools had to be devised.25 The findings of a royal commission of inquiry into the supply of milk in towns in 1943 resulted in the formation of the Central Milk Council, which functioned as a government advisory body and promoted the production and distribution of safe, good-quality milk for all town districts. It also administered the milk in schools scheme until its abolition in 1967.
At the request of the minister of health, Arnold Nordmeyer, who was also chair of the Central Milk Council, Muriel joined the council as the representative for the interests of women and children. This was the third appointment she held in this special-interest capacity, in addition to her roles on the Board of Health and the Medical Research Council. Nordmeyer emphasised that the council’s activities ‘should reflect in a higher standard of health. They would, while not vitally interested in the economic side of the industry, have to make decisions which would possibly affect the economics of the industry and indeed the livelihood of some of those employed in the industry.’26
Muriel was initially reluctant to become a member of the council, ‘knowing that there would be a great deal of work involved’.27 Nevertheless, she served on the council for thirty years, until 1974. She chaired the Technical Subcommittee on Standards for Quality of Milk, which dealt with the production, handling and distribution of milk and the development and enforcement of quality standards. Elizabeth Gregory and Helen Deem, medical advisor to the Plunket Society, were also members of this subcommittee. According to Muriel, quality was the most important factor in changing attitudes toward and increasing consumption of milk. ‘Unless we have milk matters right, we cannot achieve the dietary standards and adjustments that are part of a proper nutritional programme.’28
One important challenge was promoting pasteurisation, as tuberculosis was persistent in dairy herds. In 1944 the medical officer of health for Auckland recorded a 10 per cent rate of positive tuberculin tests in cattle.29 Yet schoolteachers often blamed pasteurisation, rather than substandard hygiene and handling, for the poor taste of school milk and its unpopularity with schoolchildren. This low quality led to ‘a vicious circle of low demand, low production, low quality and weekend surpluses’.30
The subcommittee recommended protecting milk from light to improve flavour and vitamin content.31 Muriel explained: ‘Light destroys the riboflavin content of milk and also has the effect of producing an unpleasant odour and taste … Riboflavin gets transformed into lumiflavin which accelerates the destruction of the vitamin C in milk, and when the vitamin C goes, there is nothing to prevent the oxidation of the fatty acids from which therefore the milk develops a rancid taste.’32 She confirmed these findings in a 1948 report showing that sunlight damaged the vitamin content of milk.33
These problems applied to both school and home milk deliveries. Milk wagons were exposed to the sun, milk was left on the doorstep or at the gate, and it was unclear whether coloured glass bottles had any effect in preventing deterioration.34 The subcommittee recommended that milk should be delivered in sealed containers to prevent damage during transport, and that each local milk authority should set up a milk-testing laboratory.35 In spite of the frustrations Muriel experienced in obtaining adequate quantities of milk and suitable testing facilities, by 1948 she was able to report ‘definite progress … in laying the foundations for improvement in the quality of milk’.36
Encouraging the domestic consumption of milk also supported a national strategy to increase agricultural exports. In terms of yield per acre, dairy farming was a more efficient source of protein than meat production. Muriel was keenly aware of both the role that the export market played in New Zealand’s economy and the possibility that New Zealand products could improve the health of people on the other side of the world. ‘Much of our economic stability here in New Zealand depends on the things the people in other countries can buy.’ When visiting mining villages in South Wales in 1930–34, she recalled, ‘I used to think it would pain New Zealand to see the grocery shops full of margarine instead of butter.’37 She advocated new ways of processing dairy products for export. For example, vast quantities of skim milk from butter making could be converted into milk powder for people who could not afford or obtain fresh milk. ‘Now’, declared Muriel, ‘New Zealand will have to sit up and take notice of ideas like these.’38
Muriel used her scientific background to promote the sales of skim milk powder. In 1940, for example, she advised the Council of Organisations for Relief Services Overseas (Corso) against spending its annual funds on vitamin capsules for distribution in underdeveloped countries, and instead recommended providing powdered milk as a source of protein for infant feeding. Years later, Muriel noted the success of her approach:
I had in mind that it would be good for New Zealand if at the same time as we were sending a source of protein for infant feeding, we were simultaneously building up an appreciation of milk as a food in countries which might then become purchasers of our milk powder. I think it is obvious that this has helped to expand our overseas markets in India and Asia. By meeting scientists from Africa while on my overseas sabbatical leave I have also been able to do some lobbying for the New Zealand milk powder trade … It is only by having a knowledge of overseas needs (a knowledge that stems from reading the scientific literature and having discussions among our research staff) that one can effect these rapprochements.39
In 1952 the Central Milk Council became the New Zealand Milk Board under the new Milk Act. Muriel accepted a nomination to the restructured board by Hilda Ross, the minister for women and children. Muriel assured Ross that ‘progress will continue to be made in assuring our towns of milk supplies that are unimpeachable’. With respect to the elimination of bovine tuberculosis and the sale of raw milk, she stated, ‘It worries me that we have not yet accomplished all that I had envisaged.’40 The economic argument for culling tuberculous cows from New Zealand’s dairy herd was compelling, she pointed out: the cost of paying compensation to farmers was far less than that of treating tuberculosis patients, which cost £1000 for a hospital bed per year. Muriel was often the one to give voice to reason where economic and health sectors intersected. She continued to work together with industry for the sake of consumers for forty years until the scheme ended in 1967.
Educating the public
The most urgent task facing the NRC was educating the public about nutrition. As Muriel recalled the situation, ‘People were clamouring at the time for more information – and there were literally no posters or food models or pamphlets to help in teaching them.’41 The New Zealand Women’s Food Value League (NZWFVL) was formed in 1937 with the aim of spreading nutritional knowledge, fostering research and education on nutrition in general and undertaking research on local foods.42 Its members included urban, educated middle-class women like Betty Lorimer, Dorothea Turner, May Martin-Smith, Dr Violet Hastings, Wyn Good, Dr Barbara Roche and Agnes Loudon.43
Part of the challenge was to alleviate the confusion and frustration caused by the poor communication of scientific findings to the public. Guy Chapman, a laboratory researcher for the NZWFVL, commented of the housewife: ‘Vitamins are haunting her dreams; she knows that her family may be starving on a full stomach; she realises that the basket of expensive food stuffs purchased on Friday for the week-end food supply may yet be essentially deficient in the necessary elements for building up healthy bodies and resisting disease.’44
Whether as dieticians, Plunket nurses, housewives, mothers, home science teachers or rural sociologists, women generally had the strongest personal and professional interest in nutrition. Professional publications and women’s magazines were unanimous in declaring good nutrition to be a key element of a well-managed home. Woman Today was one such source of information. From its first publication in 1937, it regularly featured articles on diet and health. One editorial observed: ‘Every woman with a family under her care is deeply concerned with public health. It is her duty to see that each member of the household is kept fit and well, and in carrying out that duty she is contributing to the welfare of the people as a whole.’45 An agricultural journal similarly extolled ‘the importance of prevention of sickness, the correct food for health, the living habits that promote health … The most important industry in New Zealand is the management of the New Zealand home!’46
A popular cookbook, Whitcombe’s Everyday Cookery, stipulated that the housewife ‘must have some knowledge of foods and the function each performs in nourishing the body, together with a knowledge of the energy requirement of each member of her family’. On top of these more scientific demands, the housewife was expected to provide varied and appealing meals. On account of its unnatural combination of flavours, ‘A meal containing three foods such as salmon, tomatoes and prunes is an unpardonable error.’47
Some considered this task too onerous. An article in The Nation’s Larder and the Housewife’s Part Therein commented that in order for the housewife to balance the household diet scientifically,
she would have to know and cater for many different daily needs of calories, of two types of proteins, of at least four inorganic substances – two metals and two non-metals – and of seven different vitamins. It is probable that no person, even those versed in dietetics, could carry in their heads the calorie values of the fifty or sixty different foods which we eat; their percentage compositions as regards first- and second-class proteins; the amounts of calcium, iron, iodine and phosphorus in those foods and the distribution of the various vitamins among them. It is therefore unwise for the housewife to attempt to do so and indeed unwise for her to trouble herself much, if at all, about calories, proteins, inorganic elements and vitamins.48
In collaboration with the NZMRC and Otago Medical School, the NRC attempted to address these difficulties by publishing a booklet outlining the principles of good nutrition, which first appeared in 1939. Simply titled Good Nutrition, it was intended to replace a 1935 Health Department publication, Hints on Diet. Elizabeth Gregory and Elizabeth McLaughlin (née Wilson) were the main contributors, Muriel was the editor, and John Malcolm contributed a chapter on the physiological principles of digestion.49
Good Nutrition was filled with recipes and weekly menus that included adequate amounts of milk, vegetables and fruit and offered alternatives to New Zealanders’ traditionally high intake of meat, butter and sugar for families on a limited budget. The idea of a cookbook as a vehicle for basic nutritional education appealed to Muriel’s practical nature: in response to John Boyd Orr’s declaration that every housewife should possess a copy of the League of Nations booklet The Physiological Basis of Nutrition, she commented that she feared ‘very few housewives would understand it’.50 The first edition of 10,000 copies of Good Nutrition sold out, and it soon became the standard guide to nutrition in New Zealand. Nurses recommended its menus to patients, and pharmacists stocked copies for sale to customers interested in healthy eating.51 Muriel remained its editor throughout its many subsequent editions and reprints.
Nutrition as an emerging science
To be effective, the Health Department needed to create a consensus on nutritional advice. But in the 1930s there existed divergent opinions on the benefits and harms of foods, and health advisors, like the general public, had difficulty in distinguishing sound scientific knowledge from ‘nutritional quackery’.52 Nutritional scientists were still struggling to establish their credibility and authority. One vocal opponent was a Whanganui doctor, Ulric Williams, who wrote to the prime minister criticising the NZMRC, as its members included ‘several from the very fountain head of the enemies of truth!’53 Williams had his own idiosyncratic views on nutrition and health: he stated in a public talk on infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) that it was a deficiency disease similar to beriberi.54 But even some of the more rational members of the medical establishment questioned the value of nutritional science. In a series of editorials on nutrition published in 1938, the New Zealand Medical Journal reported that the majority of doctors were dubious about the latest discoveries on vitamins. ‘Side by side with the literature on the subject has risen a quasi-scientific and not disinterested propaganda which is promulgated to the general public – a body already morbidly conscious of its stomach. Thus are our patients rendered dangerously receptive to unproven and unjustifiable hypotheses in the sphere of dietetics.’55
The public health challenge of improving nutrition went beyond simply providing sound advice. It also required continuing laboratory research and intervention in industry practices, food storage, grocers’ shops and the affordability of foods, not to mention household cooking habits and eating habits.
The complexity of the task may have been one reason that the Nutrition Research Department had trouble finding a candidate for the position of full-time research officer to the Nutrition Research Committee. Without such an officer to supervise the activities of the NRD, important work was being delayed. In the beginning Muriel Bell and Elizabeth Gregory were the only two members available to meet, and they frequently did so without calling an official meeting. Charles Hercus was given the task of recruiting suitable candidates while abroad in 1939, but it was often difficult to recruit experienced overseas scientists for New Zealand posts. Moreover, there remained some ‘uncertainty about engaging anyone from outside NZ when we could not definitely offer security of tenure’.56
The committee’s inability to recruit and appoint a research officer led to criticism of John Malcolm, the committee chair. In June 1939 Muriel wrote to Michael Watt, the director general of health, to express her concerns about Malcolm’s well-being and the stress he was under in trying to carry out his NRC duties as well as those of professor of the Physiology Department. ‘I know,’ wrote Muriel, ‘that he feels very worried and depressed.’57
Muriel considered applying for the post of nutrition research officer, writing to Watt, ‘I cannot think of anyone in N.Z. who is likely to be suitable for it.’ She had the training required in both physiology and biochemistry. The disadvantages to her taking on the post were a drop in salary and insecurity of tenure. ‘But on the other hand,’ she countered, ‘I should find it interesting. And I did three years training in England along these lines.’58 She mentioned an alternative arrangement suggested by Malcolm, that she take over as chair of the NRC and manage with Home Science graduates as nutrition research officers. ‘But’, she observed, ‘that leaves Dr Malcolm’s future rather dark. The affairs of the Physiology Dept are in the melting pot at present. They will soon want to know whether they should advertise my position as well as Edson’s; and I feel that what I shall do will depend on whether you have any plans for Dr Malcolm’s future or not.’
The NRC recommended the appointment of Muriel as nutrition research officer at a salary of £800. The committee sought to expand her work in collaboration with other research institutes, such as the Wheat Research Institute in Christchurch. Watt put the recommendation to the minister of health, Peter Fraser, before he left for England.59 What emerged out of this correspondence was a proposal that Muriel take on the expanded role of nutrition research officer to the Health Department. Rather than working under the aegis of the Medical Research Council, she would report directly to the director general of health.
Initially, Muriel was ‘staggered’ by the range of tasks for which she would be responsible and feared ‘that these would prevent any continuity in a research programme’.60 Malcolm persuaded her to consider the offer, and she summarised her assessment of its advantages and disadvantages in a letter to Watt. The security of tenure made the Health Department post more attractive than the NZMRC appointment, which offered only a five-year term – ‘a decided risk at my age’, Muriel noted. But she had real concerns about the scope of the role. ‘The more active part of your programme made me shrink,’ she confessed, ‘because having lived so long the life of a laboratory recluse, I doubted whether I should now be temperamentally suited to make the approaches that the school work would entail. On the other hand, such approaches will have to be made if there are dietetic investigations, whether it be among pakeha or maori, children or adults, and that too would come under the pure research post.’
Factors in favour of Muriel retaining her current university post were that she was due for a sabbatical year and that she wished to remain in Dunedin, with its growing scientific-research culture. Yet she could have seen little prospect of career advancement in academic medicine. Otago Medical School did not appoint its first woman lecturer, Mary (Molly) Marples, until 1946, and Muriel considered that appointment a great step forward for university women.
Although the need to appoint a nutrition research officer was growing increasingly urgent, the NRC declined to rush into an arrangement with the Health Department: because of ‘the unsettled state of affairs brought about by the war, Dr Watt advised that the matter be left in abeyance until policies with regard to research were more definitely crystallised’.61 The war had intensified with Germany’s Blitzkrieg bombing of strategic English cities in May 1940. Peter Fraser, now prime minister, urged support for Britain in his ‘Darkest Hour’ speech: ‘All that we have and all that we can do must be at the disposal of our cause, the cause of the Motherland, the cause of the Commonwealth.’62
Muriel’s life was thrown into even greater turmoil when Jim Saunders died of a heart attack on 31 May 1940. In view of her strong pacifist beliefs and her respect for Jim’s, it must have been difficult for her to decide to take a government post during wartime. It is even possible that this choice led to her falling out with staunch pacifists like Archibald and Millicent Baxter. But her desire to put all her efforts into serving the welfare of women and children apparently overrode any doubts about the morality of war.63
In October 1940 Muriel was made an officer of the Department of Health as state nutritionist, which involved both research and service duties. She retained this dual role until her retirement in 1964. In the public education aspect of her new duties, Muriel frequently returned to the tried-and-true format of an everyday cookbook like Good Nutrition, as it was a genre appropriate for both home and school.64 By translating recommended nutritional intakes into practical meal plans, recipes and household practices, Muriel contributed to the public understanding of nutrition, bridging the gap between the laboratory and the kitchen.
Muriel also wrote and contributed to other Health Department pamphlets, some written for the general public and others for specialised audiences such as teachers and dental nurses, covering nutrition, dental hygiene, maternal and infant welfare and Māori health. She wrote The Family’s Food, Children’s Meals and The School Lunch as well as its subsequent edition, retitled School Lunches.65 A sample lunch for Thursday consisted of sandwiches of cottage cheese and chives, a date and lemon-juice sandwich and celery (accompanied by salt in a twist of paper). She also wrote Milk for the Child and Household and Institutional Milk Recipes as part of a series of pamphlets promoting pasteurised milk as a drink at home and in schools.
Other pamphlets were more admonitory in their attempt to change New Zealand dietary habits. You Must Balance Your Diet and Take Your Lunch Seriously warned against eating large helpings of cakes and scones at morning and afternoon tea, skipping lunch and choosing unhealthy restaurant foods. Don’t Waste Your Vegetables encouraged wartime economising, and The Meat Ration is Adequate for Good Health sought to ease concern about the nutritional shortcomings of the wartime diet.
The advent of national radio broadcasts created a new medium for health education, one that Muriel saw as important for reaching members of the public who were not habitual readers.66 The popular Radio Talks on Health brought the Health Department’s messages directly into homes and kitchens. The Listener magazine was originally available free of charge to all subscribers of the National Broadcasting Service. In addition to advertising radio programmes, it featured articles on a range of subjects, and Muriel became a regular contributor on health matters. The popularity of the Listener series turned Muriel Bell into a household name.
Muriel understood that in order to influence the dietary habits of the general public, she had to make her advice understandable and appealing. She had a particular talent for translating the latest medical findings into straightforward language and explaining their significance for everyday cooking. Because of the high quality of the scientific information Muriel presented, her articles were also valuable to home science and hygiene teachers as classroom texts.
Muriel’s series of articles on vitamin C in the Listener illustrate her approach to nutrition education. The disruption of shipping in the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor had led to a shortage of oranges, and New Zealand was at risk of a national vitamin C deficiency. In late 1941 she prepared a series of articles on the nutritional importance and alternative sources of vitamin C. Her list of references points to her erudition and skill in synthesising information: ‘In addition to various scientific statements of which I cannot remember the source, I have used Biological Oxidations and Reductions by Szent-Györgyi, Annual Review of Biochemistry, tables of the vitamin content of human and animal foods, an article in J. Chemistry and Industry, a conversation with Mr Keyes of the DSIR, a scientific article in the Lancet, a recipe book in the German language, some newspaper cuttings I have collected and several days’ work by Miss Barbara Johns.’67
Ever one to encourage resourcefulness, Muriel encouraged mothers to make rosehip syrup and preserve blackcurrants.68 Because rosehips contained the highest amounts of vitamin C, she enlisted the assistance of Plunket nurses in gathering wild rosehips in the Central Otago region, and rosehip syrup became her trademark home remedy.69 A cartoon featured in the Listener in 1943 after an amusing letter from a reader about the difficulties of making rosehip syrup, which began: ‘I do not like thee, Dr Bell – The reason why this tale will tell.’ Muriel also drew attention to alternative local sources of vitamin C, such as New Zealand grapefruit, which many South Island residents were unacquainted with, and she promoted the cooking water for vegetables as being high in vitamins.70 ‘It would be a good thing if we had a slogan to the effect that you could tell from her beautiful complexion that she drinks her vegetable water!’71
Bread and flour
Improving the nutritional value of bread and flour was another wartime project of the NRD. One way to do this was to fortify flour with vitamin B-1, but this was a costly choice in a period of austerity. Another was to modify the process of refining white flour to include a higher proportion of the wheat grain, thus retaining more nutrients and resulting in a higher total yield of flour. In 1946, as a response to the global food shortage, the Council of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration appealed to all countries to raise the extraction rate of flour to 80 per cent. This percentage was a higher target than planned in the experiments of the NRD and the Wheat Research Institute.72 Nevertheless, within a few weeks New Zealand’s flour mills had raised their extraction rate from 73 per cent to 80 per cent.73
In the trial phase of this switch, the amount of bran retained in the flour resulted in soggy bread.74 Eager for the policy to succeed, the NRC warned the public to expect these characteristics in their bread, and by the late 1940s, bread made with the new higher-extraction flour had become popular, improving the vitamin B-1 intake for ‘the muscular worker’.75 Moreover, because higher yields of flour per acre reduced the wheat subsidy paid to farmers, the government saved an estimated £250,000 annually.76 In one report, Muriel noted, ‘One has to have an authoritative back stop or shelter when it comes to an argument between the trade and the Minister, and the trade has been vocal in wanting to copy slavishly what is done overseas.’77
Alongside her hectic research programme, Muriel found romance amid her investigations of fish-liver oils. In an encounter at the Sawyers Bay research station near Dunedin, Alfred Hefford, the director of fisheries research, fell in love with Muriel at first sight.78 They were married by the Reverend Colin Scrimgeour (‘Uncle Scrim’), a national radio personality, on 20 June 1942.
Alf Hefford was English-born and, like Jim Saunders, was eighteen years Muriel’s senior. He had spent many years working on fisheries in India before moving with his family to New Zealand in the 1920s. He had seven children from his previous marriage to his wife, who had died in 1940. All were grown up except for his youngest son, Jim Hefford, who was twelve years old when Alf and Muriel met.
The couple lived apart for the first three years of their marriage because of their work commitments: Alf in Wellington and Muriel in Dunedin, but Muriel’s frequent visits to Wellington for her Board of Health and Medical Research Council meetings meant that she saw him often. Muriel had a difficult relationship with her stepdaughters and did not form close bonds with the other Hefford children, although Jim had fond memories of biking around Dunedin and amusing himself at the medical school during summer holidays. The remainder of the year Jim spent at boarding school or with his father in Wellington. Jim’s visits put Muriel’s nutritional advice to the test in feeding a growing teenager in the face of wartime scarcities. Jim did not recall ever going hungry, remembering bacon, eggs, porridge and toast for breakfast.79 After his retirement in 1945, Alf joined Muriel in St Clair, Dunedin, where he cooked meals and looked after the home, just as Jim Saunders had done during Muriel’s first marriage.