OUR DAILY BREAD

Southland Times, Issue 19896, 15 June 1926, Page 5

OUR DAILY BREAD

CASE FOB WHITE FLOUR BAKERS TAKE UP CUDGELS SOME INTERESTING DATA. (No. 3.) Those people who have been busy scaring the population with the story that human life is shortened in a painful manner by eating white bread should take not of the fact that a German professor ascribes blindgut inflapunation (otherwise known as appendicitis) to wholemeal bread. This disclosure is made in a German medical periodical. It was stated that appendicitis was very prevalent in the districts of Oldenburg and Hanover, and an investigation was made by Dr. K. Eick into the cause or causes thereof. He found that the people in the regions named commonly eat wholemeal bread made from rye flour. This flour contains the seed particles of bluebottle, which particles are furnished with thin bristles. When these particles get to the appendix, the bristles act like grapplingirons, and as they are insoluble, inflammation is caused. Professor Eick found the particles lodged in the appendix on several occasions. Rye, of course, is not used to any extent in this country, but Dr. Eick’s discovery is another example of the fallacy of getting back to raw nature. At one time one of the horrors attributed to our white bread habit was “rickets.” It so happened that towards the end of 1924 an inquiry into the causes of death which had contributed to the very marked decline in child mortality, revealed the fact that in the previous ten years the death rate from rickets had dropped by over 50 per cent, and the drop in the death rate from diseases of the digestive system was almost as great. It had been discovered that rickets and many kindred complaints were really due io lack of light and air, and that they can be absolutely cured by the exposure of the patient to strong sunlight. WHITE BREAD AND CANCER. So it is with the slanderous statement that the consumption of white bread is a contributory cause of cancer. There is not an iota of scientific evidence that the eating of white bread or any other kind of bread will cause cancer, and not the slightest reason to believe that the use of whole wheat bread will prevent it. The fraudulent cancer scare was a newspaper stunt. ‘When the late Lord Northcliffe instituted the notorious standard (brown) bread campaign,” says the British Baker, “he played the game fairly, and ultimately confessed that he could not alter a deeply ingrained public habit. Now the group of newspapers which he constrolled, in one of its spasmodic attempts to succeed where Lord Northcliffe failed, are trying to influence public opinion by playing on its fear of a horrible and fatal disease, all too prevalent, and the propagation of which is just as likely to occur from the handling of a newspaper or anything else as the eating of white or brown bread. No one can say how cancer is caused, and the most these prejudiced newspapers can do in their efforts to frighten the public away from white bread is to quote eminent men, who in their ignorance of the origin and cure of the malignant growth, are full of warnings and forebodings. “Another important exposure of the ignorant crusade, being conducted by certain newspapers against white bread was made last week at the annual general meeting of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Although the newspapers referred to cannot positively connect cancer with white bread they leave no manner of doubt in the minds of their readers that the eaters of ■ white bread incur grave risks. They say, among other things, that by the elimination of the germ white bread and flour are deficient in vitamins, and that, therefore, they are deprived of their value. Dr. Sidney Martin stated last week that it had been shown that when put to the test of direct experiment no degree of vitamin deficiency compatible with life had any effect on cancer growth. We did not observe the statement in any of the newspapers devoted to the bran mash, who believe that the human stomach differs in no way from the horse’s or the cow’s stomach in its capacity to deal with fibrous material. Such an omission must have been deliberate, which reveals not only the malice rather than the reason in the crusade against white bread, but the method by which attempts are made to hoodwink public opinion or .to prejudice it against an article of food which has stood tests of intellectual and physical strength greater than any previously imposed on, or attempted by the human race. The inconsistency of the crusade is also illustrated by the fact that the newspapers which are publishing daily the couplet, “The whiter your bread, the sooner you are dead,” were a few days ago expressing the utmost indignation because insurance companies have not shown any disposition to lower their premiums in view of the greater longevity of the race.” SIR ARBUTHNOT LANE. The authority for the “cancer” propaganda appears to be that eminent surgeon and specialist (and equally eminent crank and faddist) Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, who in an interview to the Westminster Gazette had some flattering things to say about the negress who is “a magnificent animal” and some equally unflattering things to say about his fellow country-women who appear to be largely composed of “miserable little slute, bobbed-haired, puny, insignificant.” The eminent one went on to say that the heartrending disparity between the frights to be seen in Regent street and the beauties of Tanganiyka and Timbuctoo is due mainly to the fact that the former feeds largely upon white bread, a deleterious compound unknown to the latter. “Every man to his taste”—and if Sir Arbuthnot Lane prefers the typical negress to the typical Englishwoman that is entirely his affair,” says “The Bard” in The British Baker, “but his further statements purports to be matters not of personal opinion but of fact, and these are matters with which we may quite fairly concern ourselves if we think them worth our attention. Oddly enough, we think it can be established that the miserable, puny little slate of the present generation of women in this country are physically far ahead of those of previous generations. Possibly the eminent surgeon is not aware that in the course of little more than a generation the average duration of female life in this country has been lengthened by at least ten years, though, of course, this is precisely one of the facts with which~medical men might be expected to be quite familiar. But facts like these are nothing to the dietic reformer. In his, or her, crusading zeal nothing really counts but the propagation of their own particular food gospel One of the periodic Heats as to the deadliness of white bread was due in the Press, and the only question was, who was going to utter it. Sir Arbuthnot Lane admits that we are alive in spite of it, but apparently we do not deserve to be, for many of our lives are being rendered “unendurable.” There is one priceless bit in the interview in question which we must quote in extenso: “When the standard bread campaign was on,” remarked Sir William, “Standard bread did not become popular until I provided the public with a hell in the shape of cancer.” It is amazing to most of us that any individual who was associated with that campaign should recall the fact to the public, but it is still more amazing to read that anyone claims that he made it “popular” by providing “a hell in the shape of cancer.” Truly the world is ignorant of its greatest benefactors.” It is by such reprehensible methods that the cancer idea gains credence. The conception was seized upon for journalistic exploitation and even for advertisement by some misguided wholemeal and offal enthusiasts in the United States until the AaMOon Bahns' AaßodstioA Mfaad Ae

serious nature of such wrongful commercialisation of public credulity. The association saw to it that doctors, nurses, women’s clubs, school teachers and newspaper editors got the true facts about bread as found out by the Research Department of the Institute of Baking and by other investigators. The National Vigilance Committee of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World—the body that formulated the international slogan “Truth in Advertising”—supported the Bakers’ Association in its campaign against the fraudulent “cancer scare” advertising and secured the withdrawal of several deceitful advertisements. To the average man and woman it must surely appear strange that in spite of our daily disregard of the precepts of cranks, faddists and so-called food reformers in the matter of bread eating, we are now living longer, working longer and enjoying things longer than those generations to whom white bread was unknown. (The previous articles in this series appeared on June 11 and ( June 12.)