BADNESS OF OATMEAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 May 1925, Page 8

BADNESS OF OATMEAL

MEDICAL RESEARCH REPORT. LONDON, April 7. It was Dr Johnson who said of oatmeal that it was a dood fit only for horses and provided the historic retort, “but what horses !’’ And. while Scotland remains the centuries-old proof that oatmeal produces men of brawn, to-day we have a professor of diatetics telling the world in a monograph on “Experimental Rickets, the Effect of Cereals and their Interaction with Other Factors of Diet and Environment in Producing Rickets,” that, among the cereals tested, oatmeal had “pre-eminently the worst influence on bone formation.” Professor Mellanby, who has done this inquiry on behalf ,of th> Medical Research Council, declares that all cereal foods exercise a detrimental effect on bone formation in the young, and that this effect must be conrbatej if damage is not to result. It can be combated, he says, by a sufficient supply of (a) vitamin A, (b) sunlight or “artificial sunlight.” After oatmeal he places on a scale of lessening power to affect the health detrimentally maize and barley, rice and wheaten Aoup, the last being the least detrimental. The germ of wheaten flour, when added to the diet in sufficient quantities, also interfered with the bone formation. Cod liver oil, in his opinion, retains its pride of place as theimost effective means of giving the vitamin A, so as to antagonise the action of the cereals on bone. Very small amounts of it are sufficient. Whole milk in fairly large quantities, and egg yolk are also , potent antagonists, “but butter is of comparatively small value unless it is accompanied by a fairly high calcium (lime) intake.” , The followers of Dr Roffler will be the first to admit light is another reagent which counteracts the baleful effects of a cereal diet, (ind it is done either by exposing the animal eating the cereals to some source of ultraviolet radiations or by exposing the cereal itself to the same radiation. Dr Mellanby boldly faces the fact that he is killing an age-old belief. He asks: “If oatmeal is so detrimental to

bone formation how is it that fine races of men have been reared on diets of which this cereal forms a large part?” He answers the question by pointing cut that the diet of these peoples also included much food rich in vitamin A, as ,foi’ example, milk, eggs, and fish of the fatty variety, including herring, mackerel and salmon. He says further : “In tropical countries where cereals such as rice, maize and millet form a large part of the diet, th'O sunlight is no doubt also an important factor in antagonising their detrimental influence. “The worst cases of malnutrition seen in human beings can be easily reproduced in animals by feeding them on foodstuffs which' bulk largely in the national dietary. . • Apart from extreme malnutrition, however, it would appear not improbable that in this country, where the average diet is either deficient in, or contains a boi'dei'-line quantity of anti-rachitic vitamin (vitamin A) and calcium (lime) and where sunshine is negligible, the ingestion of oatmeal during pregnancy and lactation of women and in growing children does much harm.’.’