DENTAL ILL-HEALTH
Stir,—The letter in your issue of December 29th appeared at a very timely moment with the recent announcement by the Minister of Food that bread is to be still whiter. The animals are to get the best part of the wheat and we poor humans the leavings, presumably under pressure from certain vested interests, for there has been no agitation by the public themselves.
The announcement gives the impression that what is being done is something desirable—veiled propaganda to the effect that " whiteness " is genteel and to be sought after, while " wholeness " and a dark colour something coarse and to be escaped from, and only put up with as a war measure. The younger generation had got used to the browner war bread, to the great benefit of their health, so why start now to inculcate wrong ideas in their heads and force them into bad habits, for I fear that once " white " bread is the common bread sold everywhere they will take the line of least resistance and cheapness.
I know the difficulty I had in 1941 before the brown loaf was intro- duced in getting brown bread at the hotels at which I had to stay, and even then it was often only " brown " in colour instead of " brown " in nutrition value and flavour. If the reasons given for introducing the wholemeal loaf in 1941 or 1942 were sound, surely they are still sound. Since 1943 the Government loaf has gradually becOme whiter and less flavoursome and I shudder to think what it will look and taste like in the near future.
I submit that this doctoring of our bread comes very near to being an offence against the " Pure Food Act." The Ministries of Health and Food should be running a campaign to popularise the advantages of wholemeal over white bread instead of which they appear to be doing all they can to facilitate a return to the bad old pre-war ways. White bread will always be available for the fastidious and for dyspeptics.—I
8 Clanricarde Gardens, Bayswater, W.2. Lieut.-ColoneL
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