WHOLEMEAL BREAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1940, Page 7

WHOLEMEAL BREAD

BRITISH FOOD MINISTRY'S POLICY.

It is difficult to understand the apparent reluctance of the present British Food Ministry to adopt'the measures used in the latter part of the last war by the then Ministry, acting on the advice of the committee of the Royal Society working with Lord Rhondda, writes Sir E. Graham Little, M.P., in the “Lancet.” That experiment was conducted on a nation-wide scale. Its astonishingly satisfactory effect on the general nutrition of the people was attested with final authority by the vital statistics of the period while it was enforced. One of its principal provisions was the supply of a wholemeal war loaf. The method now recommended by the Ministry involves the extraction from wheat of the major part of its vitamin content and subsequent restoration to the war loaf of one element only of the valuable ingredients taken away—namely, vitamin B —in a synthetic form as contrasted with an organic form. There will probably be general agreement that' the organic vitamin is in every respect superior to the synthetic product. The Minister admitted further that it would “take some months" to supply this synthetic addition. Why should not the Minister, since he recognises the desirability of this vitamin, effect its restoration by reintroducing the wheat germ into the flour and so at once produce a bread of a proper nutritive value?