48 The Bulletin. 



BEEAKFAST FOODS. 



BY C. D. HARRIS. 



Preparation. — Partially prepared or so-called breakfast foods are 

 common articles of diet in American families. They consist of par- 

 tially baked or softened cereals, prepared in different ways or some- 

 times eaten practically whole, as in the case of cracked wheat. 



Many of them have been subjected to a high temperature, by which 

 the starch grains are softened. The hulls and skins are removed from 

 the cereals, so the product does not represent the whole grain, but only 

 a portion thereof. 



The main object in the manufacture appears to be the preparation 

 of a food which can be made ready for the table in a short while. It 

 is probable that too little time is consumed in the final cooking of these 

 breakfast foods, and, instead of using only a few moments in the 

 preparation, their wholesomeness, palatability and digestibility would 

 be improved by subjecting them for a longer time to the temperature 

 of boiling water. 



Classification. — Breakfast foods may be divided into three classes : 



(1) Raw cereal products. 



(2) Prepared cereal products (cooked). 



(3) Medicated cereal products. 



The medicated cereal products have added to them spices, sugars, 

 gluten, salt, flour, flavoring extracts, etc. 



The raw cereal can bs changed to a prepared product by cooking, 

 and into a medicated product by treatment with a ferment or malt. 

 Malt does not act on raw starch directly ; so the malting and cooking- 

 are carried on at the same time. The starch is changed into a soluble 

 form by the heat, and into sugar by the malt. In making the original 

 breakfast foods, the idea was to get the starch into a predigested form, 

 but lately these ideas have been lost sight of, and these foods have 

 been predigested to only a small degree. 



The nutritive value of the different breakfast foods is based upon 

 their content of digestible nutrients. It has been shown that the 

 well-cooked cereals are more digestible than the raw or malted ones. 

 The advantage that the prepared and malted foods have over the raw 

 ones is that they come to the consumer ready for immediate consump- 

 tion, and the preliminary preparation of boiling is not required. 



The claim that the prepared foods are predigested only applies to 

 the malted foods, and, as only a part of the starch in these is con- 

 verted, they are only predigested to a small degree. 



