WHOLEMEAL BREAD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2332, 22 September 1921, Page 4

WHOLEMEAL BREAD.

WHITE FLOUR CONDEMNED

VITAL ELEMENTS LOST,

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

The correct feeding of the people is a vital matter for the race, yet in this country, and many others, it is much more easy for people to acquire knowledge as to the best way of feeding horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs than to learn dietetics relating to human beings. The instruction of the people in regard to foods and their values, and as to the effects of wrong feeding,'is just as important as instruction in the care and feeding'of babies, because the best specimens of babyhood can become bad specimens of manhood or womanhood by wrong feeding. The high percentage of young men who, during the war years, were found to be unfit for active service, was sufficient to give the most thoughtless pause, but the average person still persists in the idea that anyone who talks of food values and their effects upon the human frame and the public health is a crank with some new fad to air. The person interested in food reform is often told that “Uncle Ben,” who had only one tooth left, flourished upon large quantities of food which he was unable to masticate, and that until he passed away at the age of 80, never had a day’s sickness. One example of perfect healt his sufficient for many folk to prove a rule. It is more than likely that the particular Uncle Ben was fed rationally in his younger days, and thereby built up a constitution which the ultra-refined foods of his later-years could not impair. For instance, it is quite certain that he ate wheatmeal bread in his younger days, because the refining process which removes much, that is of great value from the grain, is a comparatively new thing. He also ate unpolished rice, and therefore derived nutriment which cannot be had from the polished grain. Furthermore, the barley he consumed was not “pearled,” and thereby robbed of a great deal of necessary elements required by the tissues.

“ANAEMIC” BREAD,

Since 1910 medical men have been paying particular attention to the perils of refined food, particularly white flour bread. A food reform league was organised in Britain, but its voice was unheeded officially. In the House of Commons, as long ago as 1012, Mr C. Bathurst spoke of “anaemic” bread and the absence from it of the all-important mineral salts found in the outer layers of the grain, which the refining process removes.

Experiments carried out by scientists have proved beyond question that the removal of these outer layers is most harmful. Dr. Benjamin Moore, of’ the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, experimented with pigeons. Two groups of birds lie fed on tine white bread made from flour known to be unbleached and unadulterated, and two other groups he fed on an ordinary quantity of whole-wheat bread, ihe white bread pigeons all speedily developed marked symptoms of malnutrition and serious nerve derangements. They lost weight, and huddled together listless and shivering, lost power in their legs, and many developed convulsions. The birds in the whole-wheat bread groups remained healthy, and up to normal weight. The first two groups were nursed for a week, and then placed mi an exclusive diet of whole-wheat bread, and they recovered complete !y.

POSSIBLE CAUSE OF “NERVES.” “Certain diseases of malnutrition among children, notably rickets, scurvey-rickets, tetany, and convulsions, preset* symptoms very similar to those of the white-bread pipteons,” said Dr. Moore, “So striking is I his similarity that physicians who have followed up our work are already treating certain of their malnutrition patients with a diet of whole-wheat bread. Our nerves as a. nation are much less stable than in the days prior to white-bread die!. All our work suggests that the growing tendency of the age to neurasthenia, ‘nerves,’ etc., is, not unlikely, due to removing from our diet those very elements of cereal food which nature has hid in the husk of the grain, and which man in his ignorance discards.”

French scientists came to exactly the same conclusions. Their report, issued just before the outbreak of the war, stated: “To determine whether the effect of feeding pigeons with pearled barley would bring about the same loss of health as that which follows feeding with fine white flour, we fed groups of birds with such barley, which, like refined wheat, is deprived of its germ and outer layers containing the mineral salts and vitamines of the seed. The pigeons thus fed showed similar waste and paresis of the limbs and wings as has been frequently noted on a white bread diet. These symptoms were followed by ataxic cerebellar or labyrinthine phenomena, the birds falling backward or laterally with hyper-exten-'sion of the limbs and head, ending in death. Pigeons fed on a mixed diet of polished rice, pearled barley and bolted wheat showed paralytic disturbances, ending . in death.” The report concludes: “Nutritive disturbances in infants are doubtless, at times, caused by a too exclusive feeding with exhausted flour derived from decorticated cereals.” EFFECT AMONG SOLDIERS. In the first year of the war, M. Balland, of the French Aea.demy of Medicine, issued a grave warning a-

gainst the increasing use of white flour bread in the French Army. “Household bread,” he said, “has disappeared from the ration of the French Army, and this fact is specially dwelt upon by those who dread the effects of the use of white bread, because never in the history of France is there greater need than just now of well-nourished, active and long-enduring soldiers. Recently the bolting of flour used for French Army bread has discarded from 20 to 30 per cent, of the weight of the grain. The result has not let itself be long waited. Everywhere the ration of bread appears insufficient; the hunger of the soldier is less satisfied.”

The same fact was noted in the New Zealand force on Gallipoli. Bread of any kind was rare, but there were two kinds of biscuits one made from wholemeal flour, and the other from white flour. Quartermasters say that the constant demand was for the former kind, which the men found more satisfying, and much more toothsome. One soldier states that the preference for the meal biscuit was so pronounced in his regiment that attempts often were made to steal tins of them from the dump when only the other sort were on issue.

The evidence is overwhelmingly against white-flour bread. Only habit lias made that kind of bread seem more palatable, and it is to be regretted that bread containing the full nutriment of the grain is not more easily obtainable.