THE END OF THE B's

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 248, 24 March 1944, Page 22

THE END OF THE B's

(Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Health Department)

DEALING. with the B’s in such detail almost takes one back to the days of Latin and Virgil. However, we shall make an end of

this subject in this article. We have arrived at the stage of considering which foods are important for supplying nicotinic acid (or niacin), and what relative importance our various foods therefore have in supplying us with the amounts that are considered necessary. The quantity required per day by a sedentary man or woman is thought to be 15 milligrams; a very active man (such as a miner at his maximum output), requires 23 milligrams, as does also a nursing mother. Adolescents need from 14-20mg. Now for the foods: Liver, 2o0z. .... « contains 12mg. Salmon, 4o2z. .... rains is 8.4mg. Pork; 306.3:sns sek + 8.0mg. Mutton, 3oz. .... deci " 7.0mg. Kidney, 2oz. .... aise " 5.7mg. Poultry, 3oz. .... Gass ws 5.7mg. Beef, 30z. sed ‘athe 2 5.6mg. Peanuts, loz. .... Foe: x 5.3mg. Brains or tongue, 2oz. .. > 3.4mg. Wholemeal bread, . 4oz. e 3.3mg. Dried (brewery) yeast, 1-Bas. {2 ...: iy 2.3mg. Potato, 5oz. .... Be = 1.6mg. Carrots, 3¥20z. Fe * 1.5mg Dried beans or peas, 1440z. .... ie Fe 1,3mg. White bread, 40z._..... » 0.60mg. Wheat germ, 1-3oz. .... » 0.34mg. Milk, 1 pint .... ais va 0.3mg. A few summarising remarks are necessary to point out the reasons why you have had inflicted on you all these figures in the last series of articles. You will observe how the meats (particularly the misnamed "offals’-The Lancet says we must from now on refer to them as "tit-bits’), provide us with vitamins of the B group; there has been a reason behind the suggestion that certain meats should remain on the unrationed list. There is the further deduction emerging from these articles -that we must now be aware of the foods that will make up for the B vitamins which we have been consuming in the form of meat. Of these, wholemeal bread is usually about three times as rich in vitamin B factors as white bread; peanuts, peas, beans, lentils, are useful meat substitutes; milk confers large amounts of protein, riboflavin, calcium, vitamin Bl, but is poor in nicotinic acid; cheese is an excellent meat substitute, except that it contains little vitamin B1; eggs provide protein and riboflavin, but not much of the other two vitamin B factors. Thus you can see that behind the use of the national loaf in England there has heen considerable thought; and behind any advice given about nutritional adjustments to be made in wartime there is considerable arithmetic-which justifies the claim that the advice is not founded merely on faddism or caprice.