FOOD VALUES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22099, 3 May 1935, Page 15

FOOD VALUES

Sir,-—There have been as many controversial wars about bread as there have been about religion. Bigotries and superstitions have surrounded both, because, in the absence of facts and his inability to_ reason, man is prone to believe anything. But, fortunately, science has shattered the stupidities about most things, and the truth about bread is no longer veiled. No other food has had such extravagant claims attached to it. The staff of life, it is erroneously called, that is if you consider it meaning a food that will support life. Bread is an inferior food and entirely supplementary, white bread especially. People think the bread problem is solved if they utilise whole grains. This is not the truth. No diet is adequate without its fruits and vegetables. Practically everybody eats bread twice a day and sometimes three times. We spread butter over the staff of life very thinly because butter is a luxury, to the poor, anyway. Hundreds use no butter at all; also cream is a luxury, thousands never taste it, and .yet while whole milk is a necessity for the proper growth of our children, skimmed milk has been proved to support life 25 times longer than white bread. Let us have a better loaf of wholemeal, or a larger consumption of milk, both preferably, and our children will be ensured of good toeth and less malnutrition. * I.W.C.