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Substitutes for sugar are used extensively in the baking trade and soft
drinks industry. One substance, dulcin, was used as a sweetening agent for
50 years before it was discovered only two years ago that in animals it caused
tumours of the liver, retarded growth, caused anaemia and a higher mortality
rate. Another substance, P4,000, so called because it was 4,000 times stronger
in sweetening power than cane sugar, also extensively used, has recently been
shown to produce disease of the thyroid and kidneys. Certain colouring substances
of the azo-dye group have been shown to produce liver cancer in rats.
Although the incidence of primary liver cancer in this country is exceedingly
rare, it is surely common sense to exclude these substances from food.
In my report last year I spoke of the poor quality of much of the food which
we were obliged to eat. I said we seemed less able in this country to withstand
the strain of prolonged physical and mental labour than our friends in Canada
and the U.S.A. One reason is our preference for pure white bread. This
encourages millers to remove the coloured portion of the wheat grain, the germ,
the aleuron layer (semolina) and the bran, and to add to the flour chemicals
known as bleachers and improvers. The effect of the addition of bleachers is
said to reduce the amount of the natural product which makes vitamin A.
An improver makes the loaf lighter by allowing more air and gas to be incorporated
in it. Recently it was discovered that agenised flour—that is
flour treated with nitrogen trichloride—causes hysteria and running fits in
dogs. The process has been abandoned in the U.S.A., but not yet in this country,
although no doubt in time it will disappear. It has been stated that there is
no evidence that agene treated flour has any deleterious effect on man, but, as
every animal tested with the pure substance shows severe toxic symptoms of
the nervous system, it would be remarkable if man were an exception. We
certainly have enough chronic degenerative changes in the nervous system and
other organs of unknown cause. The safest plan for housewives is to insist on
buying a whole wheat loaf made from a whole wheat flour without the addition
of any "improver."
Safeguarding Food Supplies.
Thus by unsafe handling, infection by organisms of disease, by the removal
of the protective substances, and by the addition of deleterious chemicals, our
food has many opportunities of doing harm. The Health Department is always
on the watch to prevent as much of this harm as possible. The Corporation
have made byelaws which deal with the handling, wrapping and delivery of
food; we have made vigorous efforts to secure the full compliance of the traders
with these byelaws, especially the vendors trading from barrows and stalls in
the streets. The fair held on Bank Holidays at Hampton Court has had special
supervision; there has been a great improvement in the standard of food
hygiene on the various food stalls.
The Clean Food Guild has made steady progress under the able chairmanship
of Alderman J. Allinson, the Chairman of the Public Health Committee.
In December 1950 the Guild held its first annual meeting, followed by a public
meeting, at which the President, His Worship The Mayor, Councillor C. E.
Hastings, J.P., took the chair. The large hall at York House was well filled to
hear a lecture by Professor R. Cruickshank, Professor of Bacteriology, University
of London. The Guild has made every endeavour to keep alive interest in the
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