Bleached Flour

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 23, 1909

It is a well-known fact that the bread of to-day, whether home-made or from the bakeries, lacks the nutty flavor and nutrition found in that which “mother used to make.” This lack in the home-made article is very generally laid to the fault of the present generation of housewives. Bearing on this point, the editor of the American Grocer recently said, editorially:—

“It is said that ninety per cent of the flour milled is bleached, or, as some designate it, ‘aged,’ by a chemical process. The excuse is that the people demand white bread. We doubt it. Consumers want sweet, nutty bread, of natural color, and they fail to get it because the flour of to-day is lacking in flavor. We do not know why, but we do know that appetizing bread is scarce; that the art of home-made bread-making is on the decline. Whether bleaching the flour, which naturally comes through age, is in part responsible or not, we can not say.”

In an address recently delivered by Professor Ladd, he refers to the subject in this wise:—

“The purpose of flour bleaching carried on by the use of nitrogen peroxid is a chemical process, and not any part of the milling process. It is not, as some claim, an ‘aging’ process, but it is, as practised, for the purpose of deception and fraud; and the ingredient used to bring about the change is an active chemical that causes changes to take place in the oil, renders the flour and bread made therefrom less digestible and less nutritious, destroys its characteristic sweet and nutty flavor so much sought for, until the bread produced from such flour at the present time is far from what it should be.”—Selected.