WHEATMEAL BREAD RECOMMENDED.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 572, 5 October 1920, Page 4

WHEATMEAL BREAD RECOMMENDED.

CHILDREN'S TEETH SAVED. (Article published undo - the authority of the Education Dept.J Some mention has been made of the importance in diet of certain vital elements of nutrition known as vitamines. A diet composed of purifier foodstuffs from which vitarnines arc absent will noi sustain life for mori than a few months. Partial deficiencies of vitarnines. which may not b> sufficient to cause actual breakdown and yet a cause of defective nutri tion and. lowered resistance to dis ease. These deficiencies in the diet*>oi children are many times more seri ous as their growth demands a .corn paratively rich supply of such vita nutriment.

Bread ha<, been lightly named the staff of life. It forms' by far the greater part of our diet. It is oj prime importance that it should be as nutritious and as complete a food as possible. -Wheat contains a comparative abundance (if these vitamines, but in the process of milling by which white Hour is made the vitarnines are completely removed. White flour not only is wholly defi ctent in vitaiftines, but has been deprived of. more than 50 per cent, of the lime and other salts of the grain. Animals fed on white bread and water die earlier than others given water alone. It is. of course, possible to make good the deficiencies of white bread by other foods, but in practice this is seldom done: hence the prevalence of dental decay and rickets in New Zealand children. Rickets , although its exact cause has not yet been finally ascertained, is a disease of malnutrition .in which deficiencies of vitarnines and lime salts appear to take a part. Along with the excessive consump tion of manufactured sugar the use of fine white flour, according to Dr. J. Sim Wallace, Dr Stanley Colver and many others, is a prominent cause of dental decay. Only since the introduction of highly refined flour has dental decay assumed the proportions of a national and even world-wide problem. The bill-sticker does •not make his paste of wheat-meal, but of the finest white flour. In the same way white bread sticks in pasty masses in the crevices of the teeth. Especially when combined with sugar, as in bread and jam, sweet biscuits or cake, it tendst to remain there and destroy the protective enamel of the teeth. It cannot be too often repeated that owing to'-the war the use of flour containing.' a greater proportion of the wheat- grain and the restriction of sugar resulted in an enormous, decrease of dental decay in the school children of England. The sons of the war have been many, and' not the least important are those showing the relation between diet and health. The greater use of wheatmeal bread, especially in the diet of children, is strongly urged for the prevention of dental decay and for the improvement of their general health.