Nonpoisonous Bread

Bread is no longer slow poison. This momentous reversal of the teachings of U.S. dieticians has been made by Columbia's Professor Henry Clapp Sherman, dean of U.S. nutritionists, who for years has warred against bread as the No. 1 staple of the American diet. In countless articles on nutrition Professor Sherman has crusaded against our enemy, the wheat loaf, backing up his written views with pictures of laboratory rats who, when fed on white bread diet, lost their hair, teeth, whiskers, and eventually grew peaked and died.

Professor Sherman changed his mind in Modern Bread from the Viewpoint of Nutrition (MacMillan; $1.75), a 100-page book written together with Constance S. Pearson. But he claims that it is not he, but bread, that has recently changed. Modern bread, he says, made with plenty of milk and without removing the wheat germ from the flour, is very different from white bread. It is so different that white bread should have a different name, probably should not be called bread at all.

The 20% decrease in the per capita bread consumption by the U.S. during the past two generations has been due partly to the growing emphasis on vitamins and protective foods, partly to the realization that both vitamins and minerals are lost when flour is refined to pure whiteness. As a result, only one-third of the food calories consumed in the U.S. now come from bread (only 19% in the families of professional men), compared with 40% in most of Europe, 53% in France. Modern bread, says Dr. Sherman, should bring the U.S. figure up to 40%. This means that two billion pounds would be added to the annual U.S. bread consumption.

Modern bread differs in two important ways from the old white bread. Improved milling makes possible the inclusion of the wheat germ in the flour. This provides iron and two essential vitamins: thiamin (for a healthy nervous system) and niacin (to prevent pellagra). Such flour need not be "whole wheat," which includes the harsh outer coating of the kernel. Professor Sherman recommends the "longer-extraction" or "wholemeal" flour which discards the coating, but utilizes about 85% of the wheat kernel. It is the basis of the British "national loaf."

Moreover, modern bread is baked with plenty of milk or milk powder. This supplies calcium (for the bones and teeth) and the vitamin called riboflavin, which is also a powerful disease preventive. Only when made with the whole meal and milk can bread be called adequate.

Next best is "enriched bread" in which the vitamins, often synthetic, are added to white flour. This is much better than pure white bread, but is often inadequate because the added vitamins are insufficient in quantity and some may be missing. "If you prefer white bread," says Dr. Sherman, "be sure it is enriched."

Professor Sherman deplores the five-fold increase in sugar consumption per capita in Great Britain and the U.S. during the past century, hopes that modern bread will replace sugar, for which it is the best substitute.

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