How can we introduce a new stratagem for better bread.

At the outset one has to point out the cost of not having a new stratagem. To point out the cost in the personal health of the nation, the massive cost to the country from that by way of underwriting that country’s health service, lost working days and other inherent costs to industry, and the ever and ongoing  entrenchment of poor food tastes and practices.

The present cost per person per year of the NHS is £1710 and with an increasing population, age issues, increasing expectations and more sophisticated treatments this can only increase.

An aging population is a credit to medicine but we want a healthy aging population, thinking and mobile.

If the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat were good then this bodes well.

But this is not the case.

Of these probably clean water, at least in the UK is a partial success but vigilance is needed there.

Air clean of industrial pollutants is necessarily still monitored and people in countries and near those where this is poor suffer still such as in China and even some parts of the USA.

It is however food that needs most attention. Where there is good food enough  is not eaten and where it is poor it is eaten overeaten.

Sadly it is food which is at the interface of big business and its hold over governments because of the sheer wealth made from it and what they pay in taxation. This is one boat the government will not want to rock. What is consumed by way of sugared and preserved food is probably 60% of the entire food stocks in our supermarkets. Eating wholesome food takes a long time to pay off by way of improvement in the health of the masses and governments need cash now and are not prepared to bite the bullet and take the long view.

What I want to see is the establishment of a food advisory board, FAB for short, and moving the

Food Standards Board into its jurisdiction.
This means focussed caring of food at every level, not just hygiene, preparation, and care in production including imports but pressing by unending advertising the importance of good food, how to buy and make it, how to avoid rubbish foods and show what these cause.
Coding of food doesn't work very well and detailing content is exhausting to many.
Big red writing on all food labels to indicate presence of sugar, refined carbohydrates, salt and other bad preservatives and potential allergens. Big green writing for products with real benefits like fibre, class one protein, vitamins.

We are never going to stop rubbish food from being eaten. But legislation can improve the quality of the components of that rubbish food.

Reducing the gluten and increasing the fibre content for starters.

The bread industry has not got your health in mind, more their pockets. The health services of the country have to pick up the tab to resolve the effects of chronic constipation, the diabetogenic effects that the refined flour they use and the challenging and probable long term effects of contained protein and amino acid complexes on the immune system.

The bread industry has abandoned the low gluten and spelt like wheats in favour of the present high gluten wheats. And why wouldn’t they. High gluten means less wheat and more water in your bread and as another bonus for their pockets it increases the shelf life considerably.

Fortunately most of the vitamins added by way of legislation to bread flour are reasonably heat stable. This is definitely a good thing.