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American Do-makers and Amflow systems have made little headway in Bri- tain, and the British Chorleywood bread process has made equally poor headway in USA. Yet both were rapidly diffused in their countries of origin. The British system it appears could not make ‘good’ American bread and the American systems could not make ‘good’ British bread.

Such cultural variations in taste could also create problems for the plant breeder. The kinds of bread eaten vary from country to country and the different varieties of wheat are generally good for some kinds of bread and not for others. In India, for example, 90% of bread takes the form of unleavened chapatis which, says M.V. Rao, require ‘amber hard grain capable of giving creamish yellow “chapatis” with good flavour, taste, puffing and keeping qualities.’ The British wheat breeder came in for criticism for failing to produce a wheat suitable for baking into British bread. Rightly or wrongly they had concentrated on producing a high yielding animal feed wheat. Several speakers wondered whether the vastly increased wheat yields of the last two decades had been at the expense of quality. The percentage of protein in some of the high yielding wheat varieties is lower than in varieties that they replaced - the yield of carbohydrate per hectare has increased 25% in 20 years, whereas that of protein has hardly changed. How much government control should be exercised in the matter of the introduction of new varieties? Should it be left purely to market forces to determine whether the protein level of wheat falls or increases, or whether we sow only a few varieties or a wide range, as do the Dutch? A Canadian argued that Canada had no problems about the ‘quality’ of their new grains because legislation dealing with licensing of varieties stressed disease resistance and ‘quality’ (protein level?) rather than yield. From the tenor of the discussion it would appear that wheat ‘quality’ depends very much on the purpose for which the grain is intended, and this varies according to local economics and custom.

Of course, the nutritionist would hope to offer more absolute guide lines to the policy maker. Naturally the old ‘colour prejudice’ about white/brown bread

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reared its head in at least three papers. ‘Whole meal is not a panacea for all diseases’ argued E.M. Widdowson. We were not told who had seriously argued that whole meal ‘cures all ills.’ Yet seeing that Dr Widdowson felt it necessary to voice her sentiment twice, and it was rememphasised by a speaker from the floor, some might think ‘the lady doth protest too much’. Furthermore Dr Widdowson presents only one side of the phytic acid story in discussing its role in reducing the absorption from bread of metals such as calcium, zinc and iron. The story is incomplete without discussing those research findings which show the ability of most people to adapt to a high

phytatellow calcium diet. Such seemingly contradictory evidence, form both nutritional science and toxicology, is not uncommon on health questions now being raised by technical change in the food industry. For this reason the cautious warning note of K.J. Carpenter deserves special emphasis.

‘The protein molecule with its variety of

reactive amino acid side groups is such a

potential site of unexpected reactions

with added chemicals that we cannot be too careful in checking that none of these

units is converted into a molecule that

AGRICULTURAL INITIATIVES IN THE THIRD WORLD: A Report On The Conference, Science and

Agribusiness In The Seventies.

The Agribusiness Council.

210 pages, 1975, f8.25, Lexington

Books, DC Heath Ltd, Farnborough,

Hants, UK. The Agribusiness Council was formed as a consequence of the world food scare of the mid-1960s. It is a New York based group -business, academic, research foundations and government leaders - with the aim of aiding in the relief of world food problems through

fostering agribusiness investment in developing countries. Its first conference, ‘Science and Agribusiness in the 1970s’ was held in London in February 1974, presumably in response to the worsening food situation of the previous two years. There was wide representation from non-communist

could have some subtle but ghastly

effect. We known that chlorine dioxide

has passed all of a series of tests by

which the action of agene could have

been detected but it seems pertinent to remember the adage about generals

always trying to re-fight the last war.’

There is a psychological difficulty in an official body continuing to sponsor

investigation of a process once it has

officially approved of it, as if it threw doubt on its own decision.’

‘Bread’ contains a variety of useful individual review of topics such as wheat breeding, agronomy, milling technology and nutrition. Sadly, however, there were a number of major omissions: no economic analysis of the international wheat trade, or the monopolistic structure of the British milling and baking industry; no socio- political analysis of the green revolution; and no farming or consumerist speakers. Thus the work as a whole fails to provide the synthetic coverage promised by its sub-title ‘Social, Nutritional and Agricultural Aspects of Wheaten Bread.’

H. Rothman

Department of Liberal Studies in

countries and it was heavily orientated towards participants from business,

Science,

Manchester University, UK.

governments, and the international agricultural research establishments. Agricultural Initiative In The Third World contains the principal papers of the conference and reports briefly on the general proceedings.

Most of the recent literature on the world food situation has been concerned with the broad issues of general national or international policy (eg land reform, the effects of the green revolution on the distribution of income, the New Economic Order), and very little has been directed at the more immediate technical and managerial problems involved in bringing know-how and capital from the developed countries to bear on the agricultural problems elsewhere. Accordingly, Agricultural Initiative In The Third World helps to fill an important gap in the available texts. After an introductoin by Sir Robert Jackson there are four principal

FOOD POLICY May 1976

parts. Science And Agricultural Development, the largest section, contains a much more detailed appraisal of the prospects for raising crop yields in Third World Countries than will be readily available to most non-specialists. Agribusiness In Developing Countries includes a review of the Industry Cooperative Programme of FAO and

accounts of the opportunities for agribusiness development in Iran and in

the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais which is perhaps the most promising area for rapid and large agricultural expansion in the non-communist world. International Financial And Development Institutions And Agribusiness contains a review of the agricultural development policy of the World Bank, with its recent special emphasis on aiding the agrarian underdogs in the Third World, and of the inter-governmental financial arrangements for fostering agribusiness investment in Latin America. The concluding section, The Emerging

Policy Issues, contains statements by two well-known authorities, Lester Brown and W. David Hopper, both pessimistic in their outlooks.

A few of the papers steer round, or avoid, some of the critical issues, notably the uncertain prospects for very large-scale farm enterprises favoured by some countries in their attempt to make a forced marched to higher agricultural output. Again, there seems insufficient willingness to face up to the issue so powerfully stated by David Hopper:

‘Our quest for food must not become confused with the rhetoric surrounding

rural development and small farmers.

Without neglecting the small producer,

we must recognise that if we are to feed people, we have to go where the great

land areas are. We must become

extremely critical of aid efforts that

would divert the great investment potentials of these areas and over

emphasise the small producers who may

occupy only IO-20 per cent of the land

areas.’

But there the matter seems to have

Assessing processed foods in the USA

Books

rested. Or again, one would have wished to hear directly from some of the multinationals who have large involvements in the agribusiness of developing countries and from, say, the private investment bankers of New York, Kuwait or London.

The book’s most important single contribution is the review of the prospects for yield increases in the major crops of the Third World and of the work of the various international crop research agencies on which so much now depends for maintaining the forward momentum which appeared to have been established by the green revolution. This section alone justifies library acquisition. But, at the same time, there is the general business overview which is not found in academic literature and which is essential to marry ends with means.

George Allen

Department ofAgricultural

Economics,

UniversityofAberdeen, UK.

NUTRIENTS IN PROCESSED FOODS: Protein

edited by P.L. White and D.C. Fletcher

2 19 pages, 1974, $16.00 Publishing

Sciences Group Inc. Acton, Mass,

USA.

NUTRIENTS IN PROCESSED FOOD:

Fats and Carbohydrates

edited by P.L. White, D.C. Fletcher and

M. Ellis.

206 pages, 19 75, $16.00, Publishing

Sciences Group Inc, Acton, Mass,

USA.

These two books are reports of conferences held by the American Medical Association during the early 1970s. The Council on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association drafted a policy statement which said: ‘Maintenance of a high level of nutritional health requires the continuous availability of a wholesome,

FOOD POLICY May 1976

nourishing food supply that can provide all of the essential nutrients in amounts sufficient to meet human needs’. The first of the conferences dealt with vitamins and minerals and is not reviewed along with these two volumes. Each volume has a series of brief chapters by experts in the field and a number of references are given at the end of each chapter. In addition at the end of each chapter the various graphs, figures and tables referred to in the text, are collected together on a number of pages. This can be disconcerting to the reader as no refernce is made in the text as to where the figures etc can be found.

In the Proteins book, there are five parts - Human protein requirements; Assessment of protein quality; Factors influencing protein quality; Round table; Reports of the task forces. The recommendations that come forward from this conference state that, although there is no evidence of gross protein deficiency in the USA, there is reason to suspect that distinct advantages could be derived from making sure that there is a better protein intake for certain sub- groups who are close to or even below

recommended minimum intake levels. They state that the most vulnerable groups include the weaned and pre- school child and the teenager within the lower socio-economic groups. The members of the conference make definite recommendations that certain areas warrant further research and

study. These include the protein requirements between the ages of infancy and the adult and also that much research is needed to consolidate or improve the data available on amino- acid requirements. The protein needs in lactation require further knowledge, particularly in view of the tendency for many groups in the US population to return to breast feeding. Physical exercise as a factor to prevent degenerative changes is fully discussed and the lack of knowledge on protein requirements in this area is stressed.

The final recommendation for further research is concerned with the area of food composition and retention of food value particularly during home and large-scale food preparation. The amount of work recorded in the literature on the loss of protein value

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