Report on bread and flour / Food Standards Committee.

  • Great Britain. Food Standards Committee.
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on bread and flour / Food Standards Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/80 (page 3)
    flours are normally used for making brown bread. The term “‘wheatmeal’’ has been in use in the milling industry for many years and seems to us to be the most satisfactory to use for these types of flour. 10. It should normally be possible to distinguish without difficulty between white flour and wheatmeal. White flour will normally contain only 0-1% or less of fibre* calculated on the dry matter, while wheatmeal is unlikely to have a fibre content below 0:°5% or 0:6°%. But there is no such clear distinction between wheatmeal and wholemeal in terms of fibre content. A comprehensive analysis of a sample alleged to be wholemeal will indicate whether it has the composition of wholemeal or not, but it is not possible to deduce therefrom that it is in fact a product of grinding the whole wheat with no addition or abstraction. It is therefore probable that any special standards for wholemeal could not be adequately enforced analytically on the basis of present knowledge. il. With the production of such a wide variety of flour, it might be argued that no real purpose would be served by general compositional standards for flour as distinct from requirements to ensure the presence of the three nutrients and creta praeparata. We think, however, that the consumer should be protected against the possibility of brown bread being made chiefly by the addition of colouring matter to white flour and the provision of a fibre content for wheatmeal is a means to this end. It also seems to us that a standard should be prescribed for wholemeal flour even if it is not fully enforceable. It would be a means of indicating what sort of flour could properly and reasonably be described as ““wholemeal’’. Wholemeal bread should, of course, be made only from whole- meal. 12. It seems to us reasonable to define wholemeal as flour of 100°% extraction, provided that it is clearly understood that this means 100% extraction of the cleaned wheat. The normal commercial methods of cleaning remove the dirt, foreign seeds and other impurities, but only a negligible proportion of the outer layers of the wheat. There would, therefore, be no great difficulty in complying with a standard of 100% extraction of the cleaned wheat for wholemeal. 13. Some countries have a minimum statutory value for protein and a maximum value for ash, fibre and moisture in white flour. We consider, however, that owing io the use in the United Kingdom of varied grists made by blending three, four or more kinds of wheat, which may be home-produced or imported from any one of a number of countries, it would be unrealistic to prescribe a minimum protein content for flour. The addition of creta praeparata to flour makes it impossible to determine accurately the amount of ash natural to the flour. As to moisture content, figures for flours milled in the United Kingdom range from 13-2% to 15:-4%; the majority are of the order of 14:5%. Moisture content is virtually self-limiting since, if it is excessive, the flour ceases to be free-flowing and is difficult to handle. Moreover, spoilage due to mould growth may occur, particularly in warm weather. We do not, therefore, think that a statutory limit is necessary. 14. The Flour (Composition) Regulations, 1956, define flour as “‘the product derived from or separated during the milling or grinding of wheat (other than wheat germ or wheat offals separated for disposal as such) and includes meal and any flour derived wholly or partly from wheat that, before being ground or milled, has been malted or subjected to any process, but does not include semolina’’. We think that this definition is adequate but it is confusingly and ambiguously expressed. In our view, it should be amended to read: ‘‘Flour