REAL BROWN BREAD

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING the labours of chemist and physiologist, the exact composition and nutritive value of the several products obtained in milling wheat have not been thoroughly determined. That fine flour contains less nitrogen, and leaves, when burnt, less ash than biscuit flour, middlings, or any variety of bran, is well known. The percentages of starch, of the mixture of cellulose and lignose known as “fibre,” and of fat, in several series of samples of mill-products, have been ascertained. Moreover, there have been made many minute analyses of the ash of wheat and of the preparations derived from it. But we are still somewhat in the dark concerning both the chemical and physiological aspects of what may justly be regarded as the central feature of the problem under discussion. For we are not sure of the nature of the nitrogen compounds which exist in the several distinct parts of the grain of wheat; nor do we know how far the phosphates and such nitrogen compounds as may be ranked with the true albuminoids can be digested when intimately associated with fibre. Then, too, the mechanical condition of these coarser products from the milling of wheat is of considerable moment in estimating their actual value as nutrients.