Consuming Interest
Untouched by Hand
By LESLIE ADRIAN
To know that cabbage goitre (goitrogenic is the would have made good defensive table talk in my schooldays. But I would have wanted to keep the source of my information secret. Had my parents read Chemi- cals in Food (Faber, 12s. 6d.) for themselves they would have found Dr. Franklin Bicknell going on to say, 'but so many generations of children have been forced to eat so many, so very many, cabbages, that the goitrogenic effects of vegetables in our diet must be negli- gible, or we should all be goitrous.'
The link between goitre, popularly supposed to be caused solely by iodine deficiency, and cabbages, as well as other vegetables? fodder crops and cow's milk, was elucidated after the investigation of an endemic upsurge of goitre might be a source of among Tasmanian children between 1949 and 1954. It is one of the many instructive and alarm- splendid technical term) ing (but not alarmist) examples of naturally occurring poisons given by Dr. Bicknell, whose book appeared some weeks ago. He divides the reasons for the presence of noxious substances in food into foUr groups. Natural occurrence in foods which are themselves wholesome (it is the feeding of cows on an excess of cabbages or kale that may give rise to goitrogcnic milk); accidental contamination (remember the Christ- mas 1959 cranberry panic in the United States, when the crop had been sprayed with arsenic); deliberate additions (about which I have let off steam before); and the residues of agricultural poisons. Regarding the last the transmission can be in several stages. Dr. Bicknell cites the example of discovering the presence of the in- secticide DDT in human fat. Investigation showed that cows had licked DDT fly-spray off the walls of their byres and secreted it with their
milk because it readily combines with fat. No
immediate ill-effects are apparent in the humans storing DDT in their body fat, but loss of fat during illness may liberate a large accumulated quantity, with unpleasant results.
Like me, having read this much, you want to know is anybody doing anything about all this? Dr. Bicknell's book is rich in authoritative re- ferences to scholarly sources where research is no doubt being done on specific (`narrow' would be an unkind word to use) biochemical problems. He does say, however, that the clean food cam- paigns of recent years, although good and neces- sary, have been allowed to distract attention from the more important problem of food which contains poisons unrelated to germs. 'The Food and Drug Amendment Act of 1954 was castrated because so much time was wasted in debate on the facile idea of cleanliness that little time or thought was spent on the difficult idea of the control of "non-nutritive additions to food." As a result any substance whatsoever—apart from a few additives like colours and preservatives—may be added to food unless specifically prohibited.' There are countries, he adds, where the opposite applies. Nothing may be added unless specifically permitted : a much better arrangement. In this country, the proper way for mothers to warn their children would be to say : 'Put it down, dear, you don't know what it's been.'
One of the more paradoxical-seeming regula- tions in this country holds that terramycin and aureomycin may be fed to broiler chickens (or any creatures for that matter) as an aid to growth, but that these antibiotics may not be used to preserve the flesh of the birds after they are dead. One method suggested was to use anti- biotics in the ice used to keep fish and poultry at a preservative temperature. I am not advocat- ing this practice. I merely wonder whether, if it may be unsafe to introduce antibiotics into our diet at the later stage, it is guaranteed safe to introduce them into our diet via the birds' diet. These are matters on which the agricultural and scientific correspondents of the national press are not noticeably forthcoming. Is it that there is nothing to worry about, or simply that nothing definite is yet known? After all, the addition of broiler birds to the national menu is fairly novel, even in the United States. Look how long we had cigarettes before anyone connected them with lung cancer.
'You and your economical Holiday Roundabout tickets.'
Previous page
