WHOLE-MEAL BREAD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 117, 30 May 1881, Page 3

WHOLE-MEAL BREAD.

tf o the Editor of the " Evening Mail.'j Sic— With a 15 per cent tariff (oppressively uDJust to salaried and wages men) every encouragement to economy is necessary, and when that economy is beneficial to health it becomes a double duty to make known everything relating thereto. The Times recently published a letter from Miss Yates, Eon Sec of the Bread Reform League.. From that letter the following troths are gathered. Professor Church states that "the proper ratio in food for adult use was one part of Jlesh-forming substance to about five parts of heat giving substance, converted into its equivalent of starch j and in whole meal there is very nearly this ratio; but in wbite bread the ratio was 1 to 7£, even if it was a favorable specimen." The whole meal contains 1.7 of mineral matter, whereas white flour contains only 0.7. Liebig states that whole meal contains 200 per cent more phosphatic salts than fine white flour. As it 13 these phosphatu; salts which form bonts and teeth, and nourish ihe brain, nerves, and tissvei, it will be at once understood how essential it is that children should be able to obtain a bread that contains them, especially where parents cannot afford to give them meat, milk, and eggs to replace the phosphates and flesh forming !substances extracted from white flour. The ordinary processes of milling reject about 25 per cent of grain; about 2 6 of grain is innutritious— bo that 22 per cent (or more than one-fifth) of valuable food is wasted in the manufacture of white flour. When it is realised that these rejected portions would feed many thousands, of people theu'ecesßity for Bread Reform is very evident. The case, however, is not simply proved by mere mechanical analyses. The Egyptian fellaheen and Sicilian peasants (who live principally on bread) prove that whole meal bread satisfies and sustains much better than white bread does, end that a much larger amount of work can be done on whole rmal bread alone than on white bread alone. The public is appealed to to assist in the endeavor to procure the general use of a Dread whicn will enable every poor person to obtain proper nourishment, and give every child a fair chance of growing up strong enough to do his work in the world, instead of being a burden to society and a misery lo himself. If this appeal on the healthful and economic principle fail, the appeal to the many toothless mouths among the young, and, but for this defect, beautiful, in these colonies may be successful. I am, &c., ? P. S.— Professor Liebig stated that 50 per cent of food was lost by converting wheat into fine flour. : To the Editor of thb "Evening Mail." Sib. — Foxhill has been known by this name for the past forty years, and the proposal to alter this name to the ambiguous one of Wai-ili, will, lam sure, be resented not only by the residents of the district, but by the public at large. There is no doubt a difficulty bas been crested by miscalling the present station at Upper Wakefield ; but tbe true way to get out of this difficulty seems to us up here to be to give some appropriate name to the Upper Wakefield station, in place of the false one it now bears. This once done, the way will be cleared for calling the station at Foxhill by its proper name, ihe time-honored one tbe locality has bo long been known by.— Yours, &c, Waimea Settler.