NIGERIA-CONSUMER RIGHTS: Watch it, that Bread Could End Your life!

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Oct 10 1997 (IPS) - The bread they eat each day could well pose a danger to the health of Nigerians as a result of efforts by bakers and flour millers to maximise their profits, consumer rights advocates and officials here say.

The millers have passed on increases in the cost of imported wheat to the bakers, hiking the price they charge for a 50-kg bag of flour from 1,500 naira (about 18.75 dollars) in mid-1995 to roughly 2,100 naira (around 26.25 dollars) today.

Some bakers, in turn, add potassium bromate to the flour they use. The chemical’s action is similar to that of yeast — it causes the loaves to get bigger — but experts caution that its presence in bread can lead to conditions such as kidney failure and impaired hearing.

“The use of potassium bromate in the baking industry is capable of inducing cancer or other destructive mutagenic reactions in the body,” says Moses Azuike, a director of the Nati