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I also indicated a method that might be adopted for the standardisation of
flour and bread.
I also gave some abstracts from recent reports to the Local Government Board
on the subject of the bleaching of flour and the addition of so-called "improvers"
to flour and the presence of calcium sulphate in baking powder and self-raising
flour Of 70 samples of imported flour, 57 or more than 80 per cent. were bleached,
and of 157 samples purchased in different parts of England 117 or about 75
per cent.
The Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education shows
that 63 per cent. or nearly two-thirds of the six million school children in
England and Wales suffer from various defects, and that a considerable per
centage of them suffer from a greater or less degree of malnutrition. He
emphasises the absolute necessity of the people understanding something of the
comparative values of food if we are to have a healthy and vigorous nation in
future.
Dr. R. Hutchison also states that " there are few subjects on which popular
instruction is more urgently needed than on the relative value of foods. Much
of the malnutrition and chronic ill-health which are unfortunately so rife amongst
the poorer classes of the community are due not so much to inabili ty to provide
the necessaries of life as to ignorance as to what it is best to buy."
In order to build up a strong healthy race to carry on the imperial work
of our great Empire it is essential that the women of the industrial and poorer
classes should know how to buy and cook in a wholesome way the foods which
nourish best at the least cost.
HOME WORK.
Details are given in the preceding Table, and in Table VIII. 3 of the Appendix.
Many inspections of home-workers' premises are also made during house to
house and periodical inspections of lodging houses and dwelling houses in which
home-workers reside.
Further details respecting factories, workshops, laundries, workplaces and
home work are given in Table VIII. (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) of the Appendix.
PLACES WHERE FOOD IS PREPARED FOR SALE.
Under this head are included kitchens of hotels, restaurants and eatinghouses
of all sorts, slaughter-houses, tripe, offal and other meat shops, fried
fish, eel and other fish shops, premises where ice cream is made, and other
places where food is prepared for sale, excluding bakehouses which are given
on a previous page.