BREAD AND HEALTH.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 20 September 1920, Page 3

BREAD AND HEALTH.

WHEATMEAL BREAD RECOM

MENDED.

Article Published under the authority of the Education Department.

Some mention has been made of the importance in diet of certain vital elements .of nutrition known as vitamines. A diet composed of purified foodstuffs from which vitamincs are • absent will not sustain life, for more than a few months. Partial deficiencies of vitamincs, which may not be sufficient to cause actual breakdown, are yet a cause of defective nutrition and lowered resistance to disease. These deficiencies in the diet of chil dren are many times more serious a» their growth demands a comparatively rich supply of such vital nutriment. Bread has been rightly named the stall of life. It forms by far the greater part of our diet. It is of prime importance therefore that it should be as nutritious and as complete a food -is possible. Wheat contains a comparative abundance of these vitamincs, but in the process of milling by whies white flour is made the vitamincs are completely removed. White flour no! only is wholly deficient in vitamines, but has been deprived of more than u’j per cent' of the lime and other salts of the grain. Animals fed on white bread and water die earlier than other, given water alone. ft is, of course, possible to make good the deficiencies of white bread by other foods, but in practice this is seldom none, Jieiw.t- flit? prevalence of dental decay and rickets in New Zealand children. Rickets, although its exact cause lias not yet been finally ascertained, is a disease, of malnutrition in which deficiencies of vitamines and lime salts lippoar to take a part. Along with the excessive use oi •manufactured sugar tho use ot fin' Hour, according to Dr. J. Sim Wallace. Dr. Stanley Col.ver and many others, is a prominent cause of dental decat. Only }since the introduction of highly refined dour has dental decay assumed the proportions of a national and even worldwide problem. 'I he bill-sticker does not make his paste of whcatmcnt. But of the finest white flour. In the

same wav white bread stieks in past;, masses in the crevices- of the teeth Especially when combined with sUga> as in bread and jam. sweet biscuits o. cake, it tends lo remain there and do stroy the protective enamel of tin teeth.

It, cannot be too often repeated that owing to the war the use of flour containing a greater proportion of tinwheat grain and the restriction oi sugar resulted in an enormous decreasi of dental decay in the school children of England. The lessons of the war have been many, and not the least in' portant are those showing the relation between diet and health. The greater use of wheatmeal bread, especially in the diet of children, is strongly urge I for the prevention of dental decay tin" for the Improvement of their genera' health.