The poisons in your food
WHITE BREAD
(Ihsan Laman Emjay)
By William Longgood
By William Longgood
"The average loaf of commercial white bread sold today is primarily the product of chemical ingenuity, clever mechanical technology and advertising guile. It is subjected to a bombardment of chemicals, stripped of virtually all nutrients, given a few synthetic vitamins, shot with emulsifier to keep it soft and, sold to the gullible public as an enriched product."--Willliam Longgood
For more than twenty-five years bread flour was bleached and "matured" with nitrogen trichloride, a gas known as Agene.Sir Edward Mellanby, a distinguished British physician and nutritionist , discovered that dogs fed bread made with Agene treated flour developed "running fits" or "canine hysteria". Some ten years after the substance was found to be a powerful nerve poison for dogs, the use of Agene in bread making was legally banned.
A substitute gas was found by the flour millers. This gas is known as Chlorine Dioxide. The authoritative publication 'Lockwood's Flour Milling' has this to say about the gas:
"The use of Chlorine dioxide is more powerful than nitrogen trichloride (Agene); the quantities used are one- third to half those of nitrogen trichloride. Chlorine dioxide not only oxidises the flour pigment but also has a valuable bleaching effect on the colouring matter of the bran, which makes it particularly valuable for bleaching low grade flours."
Use of chlorine dioxide was approved over the protests of many USA nutritionists. The FDA (Food and Drugs Administration of USA) lists the gas as a poisonous substance, permitting on grounds that it is 'probably safe as normally used'. The late Leonard Wickenden , a noted chemist, pointed out in his book 'Our Daily Poison" that "No one has yet discovered that it gives dogs running fits so it is considered quite safe."
While Agene and chlorine dioxide generally are called bleaches, their primary purpose is to age flour artificially. Aging is considered necessary to give some flours the right consistency, but to avoid costly storage and waiting for the process to take place, they are given a shot of gas.
Samuel Lepkovsky of the College of Agriculture at the University of California in Berkley, and author of "Bread problem in war and in peace", noted that "instead of being alarmed at the decreased nutritive value of white flour as shown by the inability of insect pests to thrive on it, the production of white flour was hailed as a great forward step."
In milling, flour is treated with improvers, oxidising agents such as persulfate, bromain, iodate, and nitrogen trichloride, which affect protease activity and gluten properties.
Bleaching agents such as oxides of nitrogen, chlorines and benzoyl peroxide convert the yellow carotenoid pigment to colourless compounds because of alleged consumer desire for white bread.
An obstacle to overcome is the common belief that there is little if any nutritional difference between white and whole-wheat bread. The baker is delighted to maintain this canard because white flour will keep much longer than whole-wheat. Several scientists have noted that bugs avoid bleached flour because it does not have enough nutrition to keep them alive. "Only humans eat it," said Dr. Carlson.
Sylvester Graham said that whole-wheat bread (whole wheat is wheat ground as flour but with bran and all other substances retained in the flour) was almost a complete food and in addition could cure digestive disorders such as constipation and diarrhoea. He also warned that removal of the bran by bolting or separating from the milled flour reduced the nutritive value.
Lepkovsky quoted a J.B. Orr as recalling that during the Napoleonic wars the men from northern England and southern Scotland who lived in the country side and had plenty of whole-wheat grain, milk, eggs and vegetables were big, powerful and energetic men who made the best infantry soldiers of Europe . During the Boer war a large percentage of the recruits from this same district were short, frail weaklings who could not be used as soldiers.
"A commission was appointed to investigate the cause of this striking change in the physical condition of these men, and it was found that many people who had moved off the land and had gone into the slums of the big cities had their eating habits changed. They were depending too largely on white flour and sugar".
Despite spirited opposition to white bread by many doctors and health officials, the milling industry laid down a massive propaganda barrage which buried its opponents. Anyone who attacked the nutritive values of white bread was denounced. Industry was aided in this campaign by organised medicine and the government. "The nutritional poverty of white bread as compared with whole-wheat was so great as to demand attention".
This led to the fortification of white bread.
To understand what is involved in fortifying bread, it is helpful to observe what happens to the grain in milling:
A grain of wheat or berry, as it is called, is composed of three principal parts: 1.the outer shell or husk, 2.the endosperm or kernel and 3.the germ from which the grain reproduces itself. When the grain is planted the husk protects the seed while it germinates, and the endosperm- a carbohydrate- feeds the germ until it gets a foothold and takes nutrients from the earth and air.
The modern steel flour mill is a devilishly clever device; it removes the husk and the germ of a grain of wheat, leaving only the endosperm. It is the endosperm from which flour is made.
The flour that emerges is little more than pure starch, containing only about seven to eleven per cent low grade protein. When mixed with water, the flour becomes an easily shaped paste. The miller loves white flour because of its long-keeping qualities and unattractiveness to bugs. But a secondary attraction is that he can sell the removed bran as feed for animals, and the wheat germ as a food supplement for human beings and animals.
Dr.Carlson said: "It is a tragedy to me... that we mill the best of our ingredients out of our grain and that the best part is fed to hogs and cattle while we eat the poorest part."
In the discarded parts are nutrients essential to human health and life. Some twenty natural vitamins and minerals are removed from white bread and are replaced with four or five synthetic ones at higher cost and call the product "enriched or fortified."
Numerous experiments have confirmed the nutritional inadequacy of "enriched" bread compared to the whole-wheat. In one experiment carried out by Dr.Estelle Howley, Associate Professor of Paediatrics and Nutrition at Rochester University, one group of rats was fed "enriched" commercial white bread and another was given bread made with the Cornell formula which was formulated by Dr. Clive McCay at Cornell, consisting of unbleached flour enriched with natural food products such as wheat germ, soy-bean flour, and a high proportion of milk solids.
Rats on the MacCay-Cornell formula thrived, as did their offspring through the fourth generation. Rats on the commercial white bread became sickly and starved-looking and produced stunted offspring. All died off and the strain became extinct before the fourth generation.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzoyl_peroxide
Safety
Pure benzoyl peroxide is highly flammable, explosive, toxic and a possible tumor promoter and may act as a mutagen[5], and should be handled with care.
Diluted in an ointment, benzoyl peroxide is used as an acne treatment and the following precautions and claims pertain to this use. Attention should be paid to the safety directions provided when purchased.
In the United States, the typical concentration for benzoyl peroxide is 2.5% to 10% for both prescription and over the counter use in treatment for acne. Higher concentrations are used for hair bleach and teeth whitening. Benzoyl peroxide, like most peroxides, is a powerful bleaching agent. Contact with fabric (including clothing and bed linens) or hair can cause permanent color dampening almost immediately. Even secondary contact can cause bleaching. For example, contact with a towel that has been used to wash off benzoyl peroxide-containing hygiene products.[citation needed]
Benzoyl peroxide breaks down in contact with skin, producing benzoic acid and oxygen, neither of which are significantly toxic.[6]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour
Wheat flour
Much more wheat flour is produced than any other flour. Wheat varieties are called "clean," "white," or "brown" if they have high gluten content, and they are called "soft" or "weak" flour if gluten content is low. Hard flour, or bread flour, is high in gluten, with a certain toughness that holds its shape well once baked. Soft flour is comparatively low in gluten and so results in a finer texture. Soft flour is usually divided into cake flour, which is the lowest in gluten, and pastry flour, which has slightly more gluten than cake flour.
In terms of the parts of the grain (the grass fruit) used in flour — the endosperm or starchy part, the germ or protein part, and the bran or fibre part — there are three general types of flour. White flour is made from the endosperm only. Whole grain or wholemeal flour is made from the entire grain, including bran, endosperm, and germ. A germ flour is made from the endosperm and germ, excluding the bran.
All-purpose or plain flour is a blended wheat flour with an intermediate gluten level, which is marketed as an acceptable compromise for most household baking needs.
Bleached flour is treated with flour bleaching agents to whiten it (freshly milled flour is yellowish) and to give it more gluten-producing potential. Oxidizing agents are usually employed, most commonly organic peroxides like acetone peroxide or benzoyl peroxide, nitrogen dioxide, or chlorine. A similar effect can be achieved by letting the flour slowly oxidize with oxygen in the air ("natural aging") for approximately 10 days; however, this process is more expensive due to the time required.
Bromated flour is a flour with a maturing agent added. The agent's role is to help with developing gluten, a role similar to the flour bleaching agents. Bromate is usually used. Other choices are phosphates, ascorbic acid, and malted barley. Bromated flour has been banned in much of the world, as bromate is a suspected carcinogen, but remains available in the United States.
Cake flour is a finely milled flour made from soft wheat. It has very low gluten content, making it suitable for soft-textured cakes and cookies. The higher gluten content of other flours would make the cakes tough. Related to cake flour are masa harina (from maize), maida flour (from wheat or tapioca), and pure starches.
Pastry flour or cookie flour or cracker flour has slightly higher gluten content than cake flour but lower than all-purpose flour. It is suitable for fine, light-textured pastries.
Graham flour is a special type of whole-wheat flour. The endosperm is finely ground, as in white flour, while the bran and germ are coarsely ground. Graham flour is uncommon outside of the USA and Europe.[citation needed] It is the basis of true graham crackers. Many graham crackers on the market are actually imitation grahams because they do not contain graham flour or even whole-wheat flour.
Self-rising or self-raising flour is flour ("white" wheat flour or wholemeal) that is sold premixed with chemical leavening agents. It was invented by Henry Jones. Typical ratios are the following:
a pinch to ½ teaspoon salt
Metric:
100 g flour
3 g baking powder
1 g or less salt
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