BREAD AND HEALTH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2178, 18 September 1920, Page 4

BREAD AND HEALTH.

WHEATMEAL BREAD RECOMMENDED.

,(Article published under the authority of the Education Department).

Some mention hits been made of the importance in diet of certain vital elements of nutrition known as vilamines. A diet composed of purilied foodstuffs from which vilamines are absent will not, sustain life for more than a few mouths. .Partial deficiencies of vilamines, which limy not he sufficient to cause actual breakdown, tire yet a cause of defective nutrition and lowered resistance to disease. These deficiencies in the diet- of children are many times more serious as their growth demands a comparatively rich supply id’ such vital nutriment.

Bread has been rightly named the staff of life. It forms by far the greater part of our diet. It is of prime impotrance, therefore, that it should be as nutritious and its complete a food as possible. Wheat contains a comparative abundance of these vilamines, but in Cite process of milling by which white Hour is made the vita mines arc completely removed. White Hour not only is wholly dclicienl in vilamines, Inti has been deprived of more than t)H per cent, of the lime and other salts of the grain. Animals fed on while bread and water die earlier than others given walin' alone, it is, of course, possible to make good the deficiencies of white bread by other foods, but. iu practice this is seldom dime, hence the prevalence of dental decay and rickets in New Zealand children. Rickets, although its exact cause has nut yet been dually ascertained, is a disease of malnutrition, in which dclieieneies of vitamines and lime salts appear to take a part.

Along with the excessive eon- *> sumption of manufactured sugar, | the use of line white Hour, accord- I ing to Dr. J. Him Wallace, Dr. Stanley Uolyer, and many others, is a prominent, cause of denial decay. Only since the introduction of highly retined Hour lots dental decay assumed the pro] tori ions of a national caul even world-wide problem. The bill-sticker does not make his paste of wheat-meal, but of the linesl; white Hour. Iu the same way while bread slicks in pasty masses in I lie crevices of the teeth. Especially j when combined with sugar, as in | bread and jam, sweet biscuits' or I cake, it tends to remain there and ' destroy the protective enamel of the . teeth. I It cannot be too often repeated | that owing to the war the use of I Jlour containing a greater proporti- | on of the wheat grain and the re- e strietion of sugar resulted in an en- I ormous decrease of dental decay in | the school children of England. The | lessons of the war have been many, *| and not the least important are | those showing the relation between |j diet and health. The greater use of | wheatmeal bread, especially in the I diet of children, is strongly urged | for the prevention of dental decay, n and for the improvement of their P general health. I