authority has stated that "Vegetable foods,' including- flour, breakfast 

 foods, and other cereal products, furnish 55 per cent, of the total food, 

 39 per cent, of the protein, 8 per cent, of the fat, and 95 per cent, of the 

 carbohydrates of the diet of the ordinary family."* The same authority 

 states that oats, rice, and wheat breakfast foods tog-ether furnish about 

 2 per cent, of the total food, and protein, 1 per cent, of the total fat, and 

 4 per cent, of the carbohydrates of the ordinary mixed diet. These figures 

 may not appear high, but when we consider the large quantities of food 

 consumed by a family in a year, they represent an immense amount and 

 form a sufficiently important part of our ordinary diet to warrant their 

 careful study. 



Outline of Work Done Elsewhere. 



A large amount of work has been done in various places on this con- 

 tinent in determining the chemical composition and in estimating the com- 

 parative value of breakfast foods, and all, or nearly all, of the numerous 

 brands of these foods on the market have been analyzed. Several of the 

 Agricultural Experiment Stations in the United States, principally Storrs, 

 Maine, and Minnesota Stations, have studied the digestibility of these 

 foods. Other. Experiment Stations have investigated the influence of the 

 "predigestion" process on the solubility of the organic matter. As the 

 "predigestion" process commonly practised consists almost entirely of 

 the cooking and malting to which the prepared breakfast foods are sub- 

 mitted, and results in bringing starch into solution, it follows that the 

 thoroughness of the preparation processes may be at least approximately 

 estimated by determining the amount of material soluble in water. This 

 knowledge has been utilized by several investigators, particularly at the 

 Wyoming! and Michigan! Stations and the Inland Revenue Laboratory, 

 Canada. § The two latter stations have also made a careful study of the 

 nature of the materials rendered soluble. 



The completeness of the digestion of a food is determined by -finding 

 out the amount of material absorbed as in the ordinary digestion experi- 

 ments. Such results, however, give no indication of the ease or rapidity 

 of digestion. Snyder^! and Gudeman** have investigated the rate of solu- 

 tion or digestion effected by malt, saliva, and pancreatin on breakfast 

 foods cooked for different lengths of time. 



The Nature of Breakfast Foods on the Market. 



The origin of the present numerous varieties of breakfast foods may 

 be traced back to the "porridge" made by simply boiling coarsely ground 



*U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 249. 

 t Wyoming Station Bulletin No. 33. 



JMichigan Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin 211. 

 §Laboratory of the Inland Revenue Department Bulletins Nos. 84, 127, 

 and 132. 



^Minnesota Experiment Station Bulletin No. 74, p. 153. 

 **Journal American Chemical Society, Vol. 26, p. 321. 

 la Bull. 162. 



