1944 - Nutrition

Nutrition

Enrichment of all U.S. yeast-raised commercial bakery products begins January 16 by order of the War Food Administration: coffee cakes, sweet buns, plain rolls, doughnuts, and crullers are fortified with the same B vitamins and iron found in enriched white bread.

Kentucky and Mississippi enact bread enrichment laws. Enrichment of flour is not mandatory, but the American Institute of Baking says that at least 75 percent of the flour sold at retail is fortified. Enrichment has its detractors, many of whom criticize it on political grounds, but restoring most of the B vitamins and iron lost in milling refined white flour is having the desired effect of reducing U.S. incidence of diseases related to malnutrition.

University of Texas biochemist Esmond E. Snell, 30, and his colleague Herschel K. Mitchell isolate folic acid (folacin) from four tons of spinach, using a steam kettle and filter press. Researchers at Lederle Laboratories will soon synthesize the B vitamin, thought at first to be effective against pernicious anemia; while that claim will be disproven, the FDA will order enrichment of bread, pasta, and other cereal grain products with folic acid because it stimulates regeneration of both red blood cells and hemoglobin (see science [vitamin B12], 1948).

Britain requires bakers to make the "national loaf," comprised about 85 percent of whole wheat flour, partly to provide the nutrients found in enriched U.S. white bread; U.S. authorities find it more reasonable to restore certain food factors to the refined bread and cereal products that people want. Britain's rich do not eat as well as they did before the war, but the poorer third of the population enjoys better nutrition than it has in decades. British per-capita calorie consumption is actually slightly higher than it was in 1939, and intake of vitamins and minerals is substantially higher, thanks to higher wages and efforts by the Food Ministry to maintain stable prices.