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.

    9/80 (page 1)
    REPORT ON BREAD AND FLOUR INTRODUCTION 1. Before the war, nearly all bread was made from white flour of about 72% extraction* produced by the modern process of roller milling. In the late thirties, however, fears were expressed that such flour was deficient in the vitamins of the B complex, notably vitamin B,. In 1940, the Government announced its intention to promote the enrichment of flour with synthetic vitamins and by 1942 as much as 40% of all white flour produced was enriched with synthetic vitamin B,. It was, however, necessary during the later stages of the war to economise in the use of wheat and the extraction rate for National flour was therefore raised and remained between 80°% and 90°%. This made the bread less attractive in colour but ensured that sufficient of the nutrients naturally present in the wheat were conserved in the flour. A higher extraction rate inevitably resulted in an increase in the phytic acid content of bread. Phytic acid renders some of the calcium unavailable to the body; it was therefore decided to guard against the possibility of calcium deficiency by adding calcium carbonate to National flour. 2. In 1945, the Government convened a representative Conference} to consider future policy on bread and flour. It recommended unanimously that, after decontrol of the milling industry, regulations should be made to provide that all flours should contain minimum quantities of three specified nutrients: vitamin B,, nicotinic acid and iron. The official medical and scientific members of the Conference held strongly the view that the prescribed minimum quantities of these nutrients should be retained in the flour from the wheat grain in the process of milling. The term “token nutrients’’ was applied to these substances in recognition of the fact that they occurred in the grain in association with other accessory food factors which it might also be desirable to retain. The reoresentatives of the milling industry opposed the idea that the minimum levels of the three nutrients should be achieved by a compulsory extraction rate of 80°%; they preferred to be completely free to add nutrients in any manner they thought fit. 3. Decontrol of the milling industry became possible in 1953 and the Flour Order, 1953,{ was made. This defined the National flour used in price-controlled bread as flour with an extraction of at least 80%, but it permitted the sale of flour of lower extraction provided that the three nutrients were added in sufficient quantity to ensure a minimum content per 100 grams of flour of 1-65 mg. of iron, 0:24 mg. of vitamin B, and 1-60 mg. of nicotinic acid. Calcium carbonate in the form of creta praeparata§ had to be added to all flour except ‘“‘wholemeal’’, which was defined as flour containing the whole of the product derived from the milling of wheat (i.e. with an extraction rate of 100°). 4. In May, 1955, a Panel was set up under the Chairmanship of Professor Sir Henry Cohen, now Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, to determine the differences in composition and nutritive value between (a) National flour, (5) flour of a lower extraction rate to which the three nutrients had been restored and (c) flour * See Appendix I Glossary. + Report of the Conference on the Post-War Loaf, H.M.S.O., 1945 Cmd. 6701. 7 S.1. 1953 -No., 1282.