Country Life
11011E-GROWN Fool).
A theory, put forward some years ago by Mr. Hepburn, an Essex farmer, was revived in a new form last week at a meeting in one of the committee rooms of the House Of Commons. The subject of the meeting was to start a new campaign for purer food and more British food, both highly praiseworthy objects. One would like to know whether the theories put forward have a scientific basis. The argument was that the diseases of wheat, bunt, smut, rust and the rest, are or may be the cause of cancer and other mortal maladies ; that the further wheat as well as other foods have to travel, the more likely they arc to acquire impurities ; and therefore the more food we eat from the produce of the home farms the better. Wheat, of course, travels better than any other grain, or indeed than most other forms of food. It was for this reason that the citizens of many American townships most generously forswore wheat during the War, substituting maize, oats and barley in order that the wheat might go to the Allies. I have heard a great English doctor maintain that flour from wheat, just grown and ground, is more wholesome than flour front older and much-travelled wheat. Personally I much prefer bread made wholly front English wheat ; but on the health question we need an authoritative pronouncement from science.
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