voegtlin: role of vitamines in nutrition 589 



ents, such as fresh milk, buttermilk, molasses, et cetera. The 

 wheat flour or corn meal was obtained by simply crushing the 

 whole grain between stones, by various means, to the desired 

 degree of fineness. The resulting flour or corn meal, from which 

 the coarser particles of bran were partly sifted out, was then 

 used for baking bread. Accordingly, the bread contained practi- 

 cally all of the nutritive elements of the whole grain. During 

 the last fifty years, however, radical changes have taken place, 

 with the tendency of reducing considerably the vitamine content 

 of bread. 



The introduction of the roller mill system into the United 

 States in 1878 represents probably the most important change 

 in this direction. By means of the roller process it was made 

 possible to separate more or less the various parts of the kernel, 

 namely, the germ, or embryo, the bran, and the endosperm, or 

 starchy part. The latter represents the bulk of the fine (patent) 

 flour, which, on account of its white appearance, appealed to 

 the housewife as an assumably purer product. Accordingly the 

 germ and bran were largely discarded as human foods. While 

 it is quite true that the highly milled products (wheat flour, corn 

 meal, corn flour, and grits) obtained by the roller process are 

 far superior to whole wheat flour and the old-fashioned corn 

 meal, as far as the keeping qualities are concerned, at the same 

 time this modern process deprives the finished products of some 

 of their vitamine content, an assumption which has been amply 

 verified in some recent work by Myers and myself. These sub- 

 stances are located in the intact kernel in the outer layers (aleu- 

 rone layer) and probably also in the germ. 



Fowl, the classical experimental animal for the physiological 

 estimation of the vitamine content of foods, will live in perfect 

 health for many months on an exclusive diet of wheat, corn, 

 whole wheat flour, or so-called water ground corn meal. If these 

 animals are fed, however, on highly milled products, they will 

 die within a month or two of polyneuritis, a disease very similar 

 to beri-beri. There seems, therefore, to exist a perfect analogy 

 between the well known relation of the polishing of rice and its 

 nutritive value, and the milling of wheat and corn and the 



