Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Surbiton]
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substances which allows us to make better use of
the various ingredients of the wheat berry."
Since bread and flour form two-fifths of the
weight of food consumed by the working classes,
and constitute almost the whole diet of many poor
children, it is an absolute essential that the flour
from which bread is made should contain a
sufficient amount of all the nutritive parts of the
grain. The poorer the family the more does bread
become the chief staple of their dietary, hence its
importance. Amongst the poorer classes the
prejudice is in favour of white bread as being
better because of its colour, and the darkercoloured
bread as necessarily being of inferior
quality. This view is now proved to be entirely
misleading, and since prejudice is always a
difficult thing to combat, I most sincerely hope
that those of my readers who have not a thorough
knowledge of all the facts of the case bearing on
the merits and demerits of commercial flour, will
at least refrain from helping to perpetuate this
present-day evil by ridiculing the efforts now beingmade
to substitute an improved food, the more so
as it is beyond question that no reasonable and
humane man would of himself do anything
harmful to the masses of his fellow countrymen
and those mainly of the poorer classes.
I will conclude these few remarks upon a subject
of deep interest and of vast importance by
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