“Additional Iron In Diets Prevents Anaemia”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 2

“Additional Iron In Diets Prevents Anaemia”

The number of cases of preventable irondeficiency anaemia is concerning doctors. Professor L. J. Witts, ‘in an article in the February issue of “Family Doctor,” a magazine published by the British Medical Association, says the present situation could be transformed by the addition of iron to bread.

Because the balance between the body’s iron needs and the amount supplied by eating is precarious, anaemia is Britain’s most common chronic disease in women and babies, says Professor Witts.

“During the last war Dr. Lucy Wills and her colleagues found that between 5 per cent, and 17 per cent, of women in London —factory workers, housewives, nurses and students—were anaemic.” he says. In spite of the rise in the standard of living, conditions have not improved since then, says Professor Witts. Surveys in South Wales and Yorkshire in the last two years show that 4 per cent, of men, 14 per cent, of women after the menopause, and more than 20 per cent, of women under 45 are anaemic.

The increased percentage of anaemia sufferers in these areas, compared with London, mav be partly because of a difference in standards and because of a real difference between the three areas studied. Small Margin

“I have often wondered why there should be so little margin of safety, even on a good diet with plenty of meat and green vegetables. Sir Wilfred le Gros Clark told us at the British association meeting in Norwich that humans of a primitive type have existed for from half a million to a million years Men identical with ourselves •have been here for at least 100.000 years. Surely, by now, we should have evolved a human whose womenfolk do not develop anaemia? “Then I remembered that when I fussed about my food as a child my mother used to tell me that I should have to eat a peck of dirt before I died. I once calculated that a peck of good English earth in a lifetime would just about double my intake of iron, for, on average, 5 per cent, of it is iron. “When I went over a big flour mill I was surprised at the amount of sheer dirt that was cleaned off the wheat before the milling process even began. I assume that our forefathers, lacking big modern mills, ate much of this dirt. The Bantu in South Africa still take a diet which is heavily contaminated with iron and.it is said that their women do not suffer from anaemia in pregnancy.

“So far as our women are concerned, what with prepacked foods and aluminium cooking ware, they do not get this extra iron. It is easy for the intake of iron to fall below the level necessary to make up for the losses of pregnancy and menstruation," savs Professor Witts. “I wonder whether we could not get something

closer to the state of primitive man who sat on the ground and ate his food together with a quantum of good earth, the' beginning of his peck of dirt. This could be achieved by deliberately adding small amounts of iron to foods such as milk and bread. In fact, this is already being done in the case of bread. “Bread is still the staff of life and any addition of substances to it excites public dispute and controversy. In this country the flour used for making bread must contain 1.65 milligrammes of iron in every 100 grammes, either in the natural form or from the addition of iron to white flour, which in processing, has lost part of its natural iron. Wholemeal Bread “Now, whatever virtues wholemeal bread may have, it has the fault that its iron is poorly absorbed. More iron is absorbed if ordinary white flour is enriched with iron. So far as anaemia is concerned we probably get on better with an enriched white flour than with wholemeal flour In the United States the degree of enrichment of white flour is about three times that enforced in this country and their minimum standards are equal to the levels in whole wheat. If a person eats from six to

! eight slices, that is about 7oz, of this bread, it will supply from £0 per cent, to 50 per cent, of the daily requirements o f iron.” Professor Witts suggests that the first experiments are tried on nurses. “Probably one of the best communities in which to make such an experiment would be nurses living in hospital, as they, are quite liable to develop anaemia. Such experiments are, in fact, under consideration, and it would be worth finding out how much iron could be added to ordinary white flour without adversely affecting the taste and the nutritional value of our bread.

“If this simple device reduces the cases of irondeficiency anaemia in young and otherwise healthy nurses, who are not infants, not pregnant, and who are menstruating regularly, this would be an important finding It would suggest that we might do well to increase the iron in our bread and thus save thousands of pregnant women from a form of anaemia which is clearly preventable,” says Professor Witts.