CHEMICALS IN FLOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19626, 3 May 1927, Page 9

CHEMICALS IN FLOUR.

I POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND. NO BLEACHING AGENTS USED. FREEDOM FROM IMPURITIES. The bleaching agents and improving substances added to English fiour, resulting it is thought, in injurious effects, are entirely absent from New Zealand fiour. "The Board of Health makes the iise of bleaching agents or other chemicals in flour illegal," said Mr. 3. P. O'Connor, manager of Bvcroft, Limited, yesterday, •when the report of a departmental committee of the British Ministry of Health on the treatment, of flour was referred to him. "No chemicals at all are added to fiour by New Zealand millers." Even if the darker portion of the wheat did discolour the flour in a few odd places, he said, it did not, worry the baker, nor, as far as he could see, the general public. There were no impurities in the flour. The addition of chemicals was a costly process, and evidently not beneficial to the flour, in view of the stand taken against it by the.'. Board of Health. It was prolgibly due to American competition that chemicals were used to whiten British flour. In Britain, in the United States, and on the Continent, millers went to considerable trouble to get as white a flour as possible, and as a result a pure white loaf. Where the miller did not provide a white flour, the bakers had even been known to add bleaching agents. Some Australian flour was bleached. It certainly was somewhat whiter than New Zealand flour, but there had been cases where bleached Australian flour had been refused admittance to New Zealand, on account of its being artificially whitened. In New Zealand a natural treatment was used to procure a satisfactory whiteness. The wheat was first dry-cleaned with strong brushes and emery scourers. This removed the thin shell from outside what may be described as the kernel of the grain, the part which gave the pure flour. The wheat was then washed and left in bins to dry for at least 24 hours before it was milled. This enabled a strict separation between the bran and the flour. Any bleaching at all was obtained naturally bv a process of maturing or agoing by storage. Flour kept in bins for two or three months greatly improved in whiteness. Artificial bleaching aimed to do in minutes what nature did in months. It was pointed out in the report of the British Ministry of Health that such subjects as chlorine, used freely in the bleaching of flour, were really poisonous, so he thought that no fault could be found with the method by which Now Zealand millers treated their products. "Of course, New Zealand wheat is an exceptionally white wheat," he added, "and this gets over a lot of the difficulties. It should be an incentive for more wheat to be grown in the Dominion." The basis of any argument against the use of artificial bleaching agents), Mr. O'Connor said, lay in the evangel being preached by doctors and dentists in favour of wholemeal bread. Wholemeal flour needed no bleaching at all.