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89
APPENDIX E.
PUBLIC HEALTH CONGRESS (1928.)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23rd, at 11 a.m.
FOOD PROTECTION,
by
W. M. WILLOUGHBY, M.D., D.P.H.,
Medical Officer of Health of the City of London.
For any community in which for the living unit the largest possible chance of healthy life is sought
the most desirable attribute of foodstuffs is abundance. This is among the prime necessities for
increase and multiplication within that community, and for absence of complaints, bodily or expres
sional
Home Manufacture A Lost Art.
To procure abundance in large cities, and indeed in large countries, which as a whole are crowded
beyond the limit of self-support, masses of foodstuffs must be conveyed over long distances either
in the natural or manufactured state, and if in the natural state, manufactured in massive amounts
on arrival. General manufacture in the home, such as was known to former generations as a necessity,
with the sociological division of labour necessarily following on urbanisation is becoming a lost art.
The brewer brews for us our ale, the baker makes our cakes and bread. We are the losers to the extent
of the mud in our ale and the yeast in our cakes ; moreover, the substitution of baking powder in
the latter and addition of finings and preservatives in the former, are taking us far away from the
natural product of the home manufacture to which our forebears were accustomed and to which they
responded, as we now perceive, in subtle bodily reactions. There is a balance between gain and loss
in changing over from muddy beer to the fined product, and from the old stone-milled flour raised
with yeast to white luxury, and the loss is none the less that it has not been immediately visible and
straightway brought into account.
The eye is delighted by the clarity of beer, but it is the foaming stout, having no thought for
clarity, which was, in times past, recommended to the nursing mother as beyond cavil clinically superior
to beer.
Instinct and taste are protective in some degree, but these faculties are lost in the individual
who has never had the opportunity to exercise them on the unfactored article. Meanwhile, massive
manufacture of food comes, and must come, under close scrutiny of the expert, whether of the factory
or of the organisation which looks after the public health, to ascertain the limits to which any devitalising
result of manufacture may still be compatible with public health or balanced by advantage.
Special research with and without the grants made thereto is an essential to food protection, though
not on the spectacular side.
For food protection the possible devitalising influences on food must be considered, no less than
the addition of positively harmful substances.
Devitalising Influences.
As a further illustration of this possibility from among fundamental foodstuffs, one may consider
factored milk. A very commendable food of good keeping quality is now presented to the public ;
one of the first processes to which the natural article is subjected is centrifugalisation for the removal
of dirt, and therewith much of the bacterial content. The discard is unprepossessing "slimes" ;
but this prejudicial word is not quite fair to the material, which must consist largely of plasm particles
thrown off in the essential function of milk excretion by the epithelium and of whole cell elements
not only natural to milk but its most living constituent.
No one can at present definitely say what is the balance of gain and loss to the food value in centrifugalising,
though the keeping properties of the milk thus factored are very undeniably enhanced,
and of great importance to the housewife harassed by thunder weather. Again, the known vitamins
are not very noticeably interfered with in the pasteurising process, but something has been done to
many constituents which may be grouped as x in order. The important thing to recognise is that
the value of these bodies is unknown.
Preferring bottled milk (not the street bottled variety) for personal consumption, I make the
above criticisms, while realizing to the full that civilisation has to face necessities—one of which is
distribution of this highly changeable fluid with the retention of some of the flavour and properties
recognisable as those customary to fresh milk.
This side of the subject of "food protection," which concerns the vitamines and enzymes, is only
in its infancy, though already very effective conclusions have been drawn from the difficult biological
experiments carried through in scientific support of the lad of the past generation who fed his pet