WHOLEMEAL AND OTHER BREAD
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Your article in the Spectator of January 17th under the above heading was most illuminating. But it will require more than a demand for bread which has not been devitalized by modern machinery before the millers of England will be able, even when willing, to supply it. You say in your article that you are delighted to see the present educational campaign for changing the demand from white bread into wholemeal bread. And you add that the millers and retail bakers can supply wholemeal or " germ " bread as soon as it is asked for. But, unfortunately, this is just what they cannot do, on anything like a sufficient scale, with their present -in- tricate milling machinery. The so-called wholemeal bread, which is at present supplied when asked for, is not " germ " bread at all, but merely bread made from dead :white flour, to which has been added a certain amount of " offal," and in some cases only bran, worthless as food and withal indigestible. It will require more than a universal demand for wholemeal bread before the millers will consent to scrap their expensive and intricate machinery and replace it with the simpler methods, by which alone the true germ flour, so essential to the stamina of our race, can be produced.
The Government must take the matter up, and provide itself with powers to compel the millers -Of England to make the necessary changes in their plant to enable them to give again to our country its " germ " or true bread of life. It is an imperial matter. Already there is a marked deterioration in the .physique of our rising generation. And our highest medical authorities are unanimous in their opinion that devitalized flour is one of the chief contributory causes of this decline. . We shall soon become a -C3 nation, they tell us, unless this question of -devitalized flour is thoroughly tackled on imperial lines.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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