Nutritional aspects of bread and flour : report / of the Panel on Bread, Flour and other Cereal Products, Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy.

  • Great Britain. Panel on Bread, Flour, and other Cereal Products.
Date:
1981
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Nutritional aspects of bread and flour : report / of the Panel on Bread, Flour and other Cereal Products, Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/80 (page 6)
    extraction rate to fall below 80% provided that the flour contained the minimum amounts of thiamin, nicotinic acid and iron recommended by the Conference on the Post-War Loaf (Ministry of Food, 1945). In addition the requirement to add chalk at the rate of 14 oz per 280 Ib was continued. Bread made from National flour! of 80% extraction rate was subsidized until 1956 but the millers were free to produce flour of a lower extraction rate to which the required nutrients had been added. 2.12 However, the debate continued about the nutritional value of 80% extraction flour compared with that of flour of a lower extraction to which the token nutrients had been added. An independent Panel, under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Cohen, was appointed in 1955. The Panel concluded in its report (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Ministry of Health, 1956, paragraph 10.11, page 26) that ‘‘the available evidence does not reveal any ascertainable difference between National flour as defined in the Flour Order, 1953, and flours of extraction rate less than National flour, to which vitamin B, nicotinic acid and iron have been restored in the amounts specified in the Flour Order, 1953, which would significantly affect the health of the population in any foreseeable circumstances. They believe, however, that differences between low extraction flour enriched as specified and low extraction flour not so enriched are significant”’. 2.13. A Report on Bread and Flour by the Food Standards Committee (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 1960) contained a statement by a Joint Nutrition Panel on Bread and Flour which included representatives of the Food Standards Committee and of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy (COMA) under the chairmanship of Professor (Sir Derrick) Dunlop. No changes were recommended in the amounts of thiamin, nicotinic acid, iron and calcium beyond the current statutory requirements, and the addition of ribo- flavin and of pyridoxine was not recommended. The Panel thought that the evidence for the continued addition of calcium was not firmly established and recommended that the matter should be assessed again when there had been time for any adverse effects of a reduction in the vitamin D content of infant cereals, National Dried Milk and Cod Liver Oil to be revealed. The reduction in the vitamin D content of these foods was to minimise the risk of hypercalcaemia which could result from the ingestion of excess vitamin D by young children (Ministry of Health, Department of Health for Scotland, 1957). The recommendations of the Dunlop Committee in the Food Standards Report of 1960 became mandatory in the Bread and Flour Regulations, 1963 (Statutory Instrument, 1963). 2.14 The form in which iron should be added to flour became of concern after Elwood (1963) found that the powdered iron of the kind which was added to the flour used for breadmaking was poorly absorbed from the gut. The Bread and Flour Regulations, 1963 stipulated that the addition of iron to flour, where such an addition was required, should be in the form of ferric ammonium citrate or of reduced iron prepared by the action of hydrogen upon ferric oxide. The 1 National flour was defined in the Flour Order, 1953.