THE WHITE FLOUR MANIA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1871, 17 February 1892, Page 5

THE WHITE FLOUR MANIA.

Color-blindness is considered an infirmity to be deplored, but I think " color-madness " is a much more deplorable infirmity. This conviction was forcibly impressed on my mind on reading the article • A Demand for Brown Bread ' in your last number. Here we are spending thousands of pounds sterling in procuring machinery to dress out the most essential part of wheat, just to obtain a white shade of flour, and then putting all our old decaying bones through a process of calcination to restore what we have dreßsed out. If ever human perversity is possible of reaching a climax, I should say, then, it is reached in this instance. However, it is simply beating the air to try and make the "starch-eater" believe that anything but the idolised white loaf is any good. Sir Wilfred Lawson says :—: — Tbe way to bo healthy, wealthy, and wise, Is be a teetotaller and advertise. And I say to our growing generation :—: — The way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, Is eat brown bread, and so add to your size ; for nothing is more conducive to bone and muscular development than the phosphates confined in whole meal. Shakespeare says "Throw physic to the dogs"; but I feel convinced that if he lived in these days he would substitute roller flour bread instead of physic, Another writer says "Never prophesy until you know"; but, in spite of thia, I venture to prophesy that, if we persist in our mad fad of white bread, we shall, in the next generation, see our children rickety and imbecile, especially as we are not a fish-eating people. It is high time to wake out of sleep, and to make sweeping reforms in regard to our diet before we have saddled posterity with a mentally and physically decaying generation. If millers had improved their stone mills by purchasing more wheat-cleaning machinery, it would have been far better for them financially than the present system of doing all they can to pander to the popular white-loaf fad ; for I contend that if stone mills were equipped with as many wheat-cleaning and flourdressing appliances as the roller mills, equally satisfactory results could be obtained. However, all things move in circles, and as sure as the sun comes round again bo will a reaction set in against the mad folly of to-day. Macaulay's famous word picture of the New Zealander standing on London Bridge viewing the ruins of St. Paul's is not more extravagant than for me to say the African pigmies, of whom Stanley speaks, will raise monuments on the ruins of our Parliament Houses to the memory of the fallen races of Australians if we persist in ruining our constitutions at the shrine of roller-flour bread. " J.C.U." in the • Australian Miller.'

A woman was questioning a prospective servant the other day, when the domestic complained that at her last place they had only ordinary milk, stating that only firstclass milk was good for her health. The housewife replied that there would be no trouble over the milk question, as they kept a cow. After hesitating a moment the domestic said : " A coo ! — a coo, is it ? A coo in the fambly be a good dale o' trouble. I think I doan't want the plaaue."