Report of the Panel on Composition and Nutritive Value of Flour / presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Minister of Health.

  • Great Britain. Panel on Composition and Nutritive Value of Flour.
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Panel on Composition and Nutritive Value of Flour / presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Minister of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/50 (page 6)
    Of the total bread consumption both inside and outside the home, 91-92 per cent. is subsidised. 5.13. The Flour Order, 1953(%) defines National flour as follows :— “*National Flour’ means flour complying with the following conditions : — (i) it shall contain the maximum quantity of wheat germ which, having regard to the type of milling, can be included in such flour ; (ii) it shall not include any coarse or added bran ; and (iii) it shall consist of wheat flour and shall either be of 80 per cent. extraction or shall be of substantially the same nature and contain substantially the same quantities and proportions of constituents as flour of 80 per cent. extraction.” When the Order was: drafted, it was assumed that the normal range of composition of such flour would set practical limits to permissible variations and so enable infringement of the Order to be proved and appropriate legal action to be taken. In practice this has not proved feasible. Moreover, competition to meet the demands of bakers for white flours has been so Keen that, without an effective means of enforcement, it has been impossible to prevent a progressive lowering of the extraction rate of National flour. Appendix 2 gives the results of analyses of bulked samples of flour by the Department of the Government Chemist in 1954 and in January to March, 1955. These results indicate that in the periods covered by these figures, subsidised National bread was being made from a flour containing significantly less vitamin B,, and slightly less nicotinic acid and iron, than was contained in the 70 per cent. extraction enriched flour used to make unsubsidised bread. Moreover, added “token” nutrients have recently been found in a number of the samples of National flour contrary to the avowed intention of the Order* (see Appendix 2). 5.14. Possible methods of amending the Order so that its provisions could be enforced were later examined by a representative technical group. In subsequent discussions with the milling industry it became clear, however, that the industry was in fact still unwilling to accept as valid the significance from the point of view of human health of the nutritional considerations on which the Order itself was based, namely, that even with present-day diets a flour of 80 per cent. extraction is superior nutritionally to a flour of lower extraction in which the three “token” nutrients have been restored to the specified levels. The industry therefore urged that, before any amendment of the Order was considered, its whole nutritional basis should be reviewed, especially in the light of the Widdowson-McCance Report(?*). 5.15. The Terms of Reference of the Panel were extended to include an assessment of the relative nutritive values of restored and unrestored low extraction flours. This was thought desirable because the findings of the Widdowson-McCance investigation in Germany were held by some to raise the whole question of whether any form of reinforcement of flour of low extraction is, in fact, necessary for adequate nutrition. * One of the recommendations of the Post-War Loaf Conference('*) was to ascertain whether methods could be devised for determining by examination of flour whether the “token ”’ nutrients present were obtained wholly from the wheat grain or had been added in synthetic form. A test which achieves this objective in respect of vitamin B,, which is now res in powder form, has been devised by Dr. J. J. C. Hinton of the Cereals Research tation(*>).