WHITE BREAD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5458, 7 August 1929, Page 4

WHITE BREAD.

BEST FOR HF.AT AND ENERGY. VIEWS OF RESEARCH CHEMIST. White bread is better than whole wheaten meal bread for producing heat and energy in the human body, according to Mr H. E. West, chemist in charge of the Wheat Research Institute’s laboratory in Christchurch. Mr West states that wholemeal bread is less digestible than white bread. Well-conducted experiments showed that it was cheaper and better, from a dietetic point of view, to feed to farm animals the bran and pollard absent from white bread, and to recover those by-products in the improved form of meat, eggs, and milk. “Bread is a starchy food,” said Mr West, when approached on the subject of white versus brown bread. “Starch is used primarily for heat and energy. Heat is measured in calories. One pound of white flour will give 1675 calories, or heat units, and one pound of a leg of mutton gives 900 calories. For producing heat and energy one pound of flour is almost double the value of one pound of meat.

“That practically establishes the economic domestic use of bread as a source of a greater amount of heat and energy. An ordinary men doing professional work requires 2500 to 2700 calories a day. Men doing manual work reauiie 3500 calories, and others doing heavywork, such as on the roads, need up to 8000. Growing boys who are ever active at games require about 5000.

“When we consider flour and bread purely as a source of heat and energy we must consider the digestibility of the substances. Wheat offal is about 50 per cent, indigestible, and, roughly, in wholemeal bread there is about 8 per cent, of indigestible matter. In one pound of wholemeal flour there is about 92 per cent, digestible matter, on the basis that ordinary white flour is 100 per cent, digestible. Then, pound for pound, white flour is more digestible than wholemeal, and must be a more economical food from that point of view. “In wholemeal bread there is, roughly, 3 per cent, more moisture than in white bread. We find, then, that wholemeal bread is less digestible, and that the total amount of solid matter in white bread is greater than in wholemeal. “It is said that brown bread has more fibre, minerals, vitamins, and proteins. The vitamin content in whole-wheaten bread is so small that we have to look elsewhere in our diet for a supply of the necessary vitamins. As for mineral matter, there is in the ordinary diet sufficient phosphoric acid without worrying about the extra amount we might get from whole wheat. While there is more nitrogenous matter in wholemeal bread than in white, well-conducted experiments have shown that it is cheaper and better, from a dietetic point of view, to feed the wheat offal to animals and to use with white bread the nitrogen products, such as meat, eggs, and milk, than to use that nitrogenous matter in the form of the bran in wholemeal bread.

“Experiments carried out in many countries have shown that the wheat berry is not an ideal food in itself. It is deficient in certain protein ‘stepping stones,’ without which growth cannot be carried on m the human system. In experiments with rats on an tntire wheat diet the rats have maintained themselves, but no growth has taken place ; but when proteins from an animal source were substituted for a quarter of the wheat diet there was a marked difference in the growth of the rats.”