VALUE OF MILK

Northern Advocate, 28 July 1934, Page 10

VALUE OF MILK

ESSENTIAL TO WHITE BREAD. COUNT E H ACT] NO DEFICIENCIES. (By ‘ ‘ Cardinal Point. ”) It is not the intention hero to go into the vexed question of whole-meal versus white bread, which has given rise to so much discussion. However, the fact remains that white bread made from milk is a nearly perfect food. The milk replaces valuable nutrition constituents which have been removed in the excessive refining of wheat. In order to more fully understand the subject one must go back in history. As the chief food for the majority of the world’s people throughout the ages of civilisation bread in some form or other has played a predominating part in the maintenance and development of mankind. Back through the pages of history, wherever cereal foods have been grown, bread of some sort has formed a prominent component of the human diet. The art of bread-making antedates all authentic history, so that it is impossible to tell where it was first made, or by whom. However, etchings and carvings on some old tombs have been found which describe bread-making as practised by the ancient Egyptians. The earliest bread was probably made by grinding wheat by hand between two stones, after the manner of a pestle and mortar. Many of these early implements have been found in various parts of the world, notably in the Channel Islands, where they arc known as quorns. The resulting coarse meal, with nothing removed, was mixed with water, with no leavening substance and possibly no salt. This was baked on another stone that had previously been heated in a lire. A similar process is still carried out by some of the wild South American Indians, and in parts of Asia. Stone Age Cakes. In Switzerland have been found the calcined remains of cakes made from coarsely-ground grain in lake dwellings that date back to the Stone Age. The cakes were made of different kinds of grain, barley and one-grained wheat being among the ingredients.

Perhaps the earliest form of bread, if that word may he used, was prepared from acorns and beech nuts. To this day a sort of cake prepared from crushed acorns is eaten by the Indians of the. Pacific slopes of North America. Pliny speaks of a crude process in connection with wheat; the grain was evidently pounded, and the crushed remnant soaked into a sort of pulp, then made into a cake and dried in the sun. The discovery that when fermenting fruit juices nr the juice of the palm were used in (he place of water, and the dough was allowed to stand for a short while, the bread increased in volume and was porous, was probably accidental. A little later these ancient people learned that by saving a little of the dough from day to day and mixing it with fresh dough made from water the same result was obtained as when the fermenting juices were used. This was an important step, because it permitted the making of an improved bread all the year round. Thus the discovery was a forerunner of the yeast we find so essential today.

Up to this point the cereal, though coarse and rough, retained the constituents invaluable as foods. With the coming of elaborate machinery the gradual elimination of these, so as to make a, fine white flour to suit the changing public taste, began. For many hundreds of years wheat was milled between' millstones. This was merely a process of pulverisation, the wheat being ground to a rather coarse meal, which was then separated by means of sieves and, later, bolting cloth. The finer part, which passed through the sieve, constituted the flour. The bran and other constituents i, o essential to life and health were discarded, partly on account of their imparting an undesirable colour. , It may be pointed out here that the probable cause for the swing in public taste from the age-old whole-meal bread to white-flour bread was brought about by the fact that when white-bread was first introduced it was expensive, and graced only the tables of the nobility and gentry. Human nature being what j it is, others coveted it, and gradually, .with increased production and lower costs, white flour took the place of whole- meal. Thus it came about that the people sacrificed n complete foodstud’ for the whim of fashion. How this white flour in bread can be mad? equal in food value to whole meal will be dealt with later. White Flour Losses, The modern method of milling is a crushing rather Ilian a grinding process. The wheat passes through several sets of stool rollers. The first set slightly crushes the berries, which then pass over sieves, some of the flour being separated at this point. The wheat then passes through several successive pairs of rollers, each pair being set slightly closer together than the preceding ones, and at each crushing more of the flour is liberated.

Chemistry and the modern science of nutrition show that when wheat is milled, some of the protein—i.e., that of the grain and bran —some of the vitamin content, much of the mineral constituents, and practically all of the crude fibre, which is the part hard to digest without proper mastication, but is highly esteemed as ah internal cleanser, are removed. It also lacks watersoluble vitamin B,

Thus it is that ordinary white-flour bread is, by itself, little more than baked starch, and is definitely devoid of the most important elements of nutrition'.

On the other hand, it has been proved that bread made, from white flour with the maximum amount of milk and yeast possible closely approximates, and in some respects excels, whole-meal bread in nutritional value. Thus science and chemistry have made it possible for us to ,have a .perfect and economical food in the form of white bread, which most people prefer, on account of the colour, texture and flavour'.