WHOLEMEAL AND OTHER BREAD
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIRS The letter of your correspondent, the President of the American Institute of Baking, is evidently written in wrathful apprehension lest the serious attack which is being made on the modern pernicious extremely white bread and flour should interfere with the even tenor of his trade. The advocates of a better and more health-giving bread and flour have at any rate no vested interests to defend and are not influenced by any considerations other than the improvement of the physique and health of the people.
The objectionable tone of the letter is only equalled by the inaccuracy of its statements. By way of direct refutation of its principal assertion suffice it to say that all modern biologists and dieticians are impressed with the superiority of whole-wheat flour over the extremely white kind which is being supplied in such enormous quantities on both sides of the Atlantic, also that an old-fashioned and less white bread and flour which contains some of the wheat-germ but hardly any bran holds an intermediate position between the two.
It is impossible to follow your correspondent in his anintelli. gible remark about butter being removed from whole-milk, but it is certain that the entire removal of the wheat-germ, which he seems never to have heard of, in addition to the removal of the bran, robs the flour of the best of the proteins, the best of the fat, the best of the salts and the whole of the vitamines.
Nobody has ever maintained that whole-meal bread is a perfectly sufficient food by itself for man ; but it certainly comes much nearer to being so than the ordinary extremely
white which is being turned out in such immense quantities, no doubt from the bakeries represented in the American Institute as well as in this country.
In the light of modern knowledge it would seem almost criminal to oppose the efforts which are being made to stop the robbing of our bread and flour of constituents which are essential to development and health. The noxious effects, particularly on young children, of ingesting large quantities of carbohydrate unbalanced by proper accompanying vitamines A and B are recognized to-day by all authorities, as is also the difficulty of making up for the loss of these vitamines by the consumption of other natural foodstuffs ; and, indeed, the impossibility for the poorer classes to do so as they cannot afford more expensive foods and depend on their bread and flour as their staple article of diet.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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