HC Deb 26 February 1953 vol 511 cc2309-10
60. Miss Lee

asked the Minister of Health how far his Department is able and prepared to supply the British housewife with authoritative information about the nutritional value of the various types of bread on the market; and if he is satisfied that no bread offered for sale contains ingredients injurious to health.

Mr. Iain Macleod

With regard to the first part of the Question. I would refer the hon. Member to the answer about the nutritional value of flour given by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Food to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) on 23rd February. I do not think it would be practicable to take the course proposed in view of the very large number of speciality flours which, I am advised, are now on the market.

With regard to the second part, this whole subject is at present under active examination. The published results of investigations so far have failed to indicate that bread contains substances injurious to human health.

Miss Lee

Does the Minister not agree that there is still no source of information, in non-technical terms, open to housewives? If he does not feel that it is within his Department that something should be done, could he, over the B.B.C. or in some other form, give some guidance to housewives, who, when they go into a bakery, do not really know one loaf, in nutritional terms, from another?

Mr. Macleod

There are something like 300 flours and types of bread involved, and I do not think it is possible to give advice on that. I do not support the view that this is a matter in which the man from Whitehall knows better than the housewife.

Mr. Woodburn

Would the right hon. Gentleman consider attaching a red label to types of flour and bread from which the nutritional ingredients have been removed?

Mr. Macleod

That is a matter for my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Food.

Dr. Stross

Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that as far back as 1946 an inter-Departmental committee advised that a certain substance which is still used for improving and bleaching flour should not be used, and that it was considerably injurious to health? Does he not think that "active consideration" has now played its part and that we might have the word "immediately"?

Mr. Macleod

The Departmental committee on which the Ministry of Food is represented is examining this matter, under my Chief Medical Officer. In regard to the first part of the supplementary question—and if we are both referring to the same point—the reform to which the hon. Gentleman is referring is now out of date, as that substance is not being used.