Medicine: Bread and Vitamins

The campaign to add iron and vitamins to white bread has bogged down. So declared Dr. William Henry Sebrell Jr., famed nutritionist of the U.S. Public Health Service, last week. Year ago, most U.S. bakers agreed to enrich their white bread with: i) thiamin (the “morale vitamin” B ₁; 2) nicotinic acid (to prevent pellagra); 3) iron. Although enrichment accounts for only 3% of baking costs, less than a third of U.S. bread is now vitaminized. Reason: public apathy, bakers’ indifference. One large baking company in Washington, D.C., among the first to fortify its flour, has now gone back to baking plain white bread.