BREAD AND HEALTH.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 September 1920, Page 6

BREAD AND HEALTH.

WHEATMEAL BREAD RECOMMENDED. (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 vita'mines. A diet composed of purified foodstuffs from which vitamines are absent, will not sustain life for more than a few months, Partial deficiencies of vitamines, which may not be sufficient to calico actual breakdown, are 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 comparatively rich supply of 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 importance therefore that it should be as nutritious and as complete a food as possible. Wheat contains a comparative abundance of these vitnmines, but in the process of milling by which white flour is made, the vitamines are completely removed. White flour not only is wholly deficient in vitamines, 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 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 vitamines and lime malts appear to take a part. Along with the excessive consumption of manufactured sugar, 'the use of fine white Hour, according to Dr. J. Sim Wallace, Dr. Stanley Delyer and many others, is a prominent cause of dental decay. Only since the introduction of liifiliiy refined flour lias dental decay assumed the proportions of a national and even world-wide problem. The billsticker does not make his paste of wheatmeal, but of the finest white flour. In the same way while bread sticks in pasty masses in the crevices of the teetli. Especially when combined with sugar, as in bread and jam, sweet Iriscuts or cake, it tends 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 lessons 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.