NUTRITION AND PALATABILITY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21204, 29 August 1940, Page 6

NUTRITION AND PALATABILITY

Although the incorporation of the health-giving wheat germ with its vitamin B 1 in the daily bread is not entirely new, much interest is attached to the research of the New Zealand Wheat Research Institute in that connection. The objective is to produce bread combining the palatability of “white” bread with the nutritive value of “wholemeal,” and that is where the public interest lies. For years controversy on the subject has raged. Wholemeal bread has had its most ardent advocates, but the objection has been that many do not find the wholemeal palatable. Science is again coming to the rescue, and the people will soon have the opportunity of testing for themselves the success of the Research Institute’s experiments. Expert opinion is so firm and so general that wholemeal bread is a far more valuable article of diet than the white variety that there is no doubt about the importance of the subject. The matter is of particular moment to the poorer people, with whom bread is the staple food. Those who can afford a wide variety in diet have little difficulty in securing ample of the various vitamins, but where bread is the main means of sustenance the need is obvious. Experts have also pointed insistently to lack of nutritive value in lunches provided for children at school. To the growing child the matter is of more importance than to the average adult. Many children are simply given “enough to eat” without the slightest regard for nutritive value. The process by which the new bread is produced has been in the experimental stage at the Research Institute for a year, and is only one of several important achievements by that institution. The growing of wheat and the evolution of improved varieties have resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of flour supplied by the millers. There was a time when most bakeries considered it essential to use a proportion of imported wheat or flour to produce high-class bread, in spite of the fact that New Zealand possesses most of the climatic and other conditions necessary for the production of suitable wheat. The Government has done its best by subsidies and other means to foster the industry in New Zealand, and it is satisfactory that science is being applied to every process from the growing to the baking.