parative values of bread
made from the finer or courser flours ground from one and the same
grain. Again, it is an indisputable fact that branny particles when
admitted into the flour in the degree of imperfect division in
which our ordinary milling processes leave them very considerably
increase the peristaltic action, and hence the alimentary canal is
cleared much more rapidly of its contents. It is also well known
that the poorer classes almost invariably prefer the whiter bread,
and among some of those who work the hardest and who consequently
soonest appreciate a difference in nutritive quality (navvies, for
example) it is distinctly stated that their preference for the
whiter bread is founded on the fact that the browner passes through
them too rapidly; consequently, before their systems have extracted
from it as much nutritious matter as it ought to yield them.... In
fact, all experience tends to show that the state as well as the
chemical composition of our food must be considered; in other
words, that the digestibility and aptitude for assimilation are not
less important qualities than its ultimate composition.

"But to suppose that whole-wheat meal as ordinarily prepared is, as
has generally been assumed, weight for weight more nutritious than
ordinary bread flour is an utter fallacy founded on theoretical
text-book dicta, not only entirely unsupported by experience, but
inconsistent with it. In fact, it is just the poorer fed and the
harder working that should have the ordinary flour bread rather
than the whole-meal bread as hitherto prepared, and it is the
overfed and the sedentary that should have such whole-meal bread.
Lastly, if the whole grain were finely ground, it is by no means
certain that the percentage of really nutritive nitrogenous matters
would be higher than in ordinary bread flour, and it is quite a
question whether the excess of earthy phosphates would not then be
injurious."--LAWES AND GILBERT.[68]

* * * * *

"According to the chemical analysis of graham, entire wheat, and
standard patent flours milled from the same lot of hard Scotch Fife
spring wheat, the graham flour contained the highest and the
patent flour the lowest percentage of total protein. But according
to the results of dig