Cor)! Oil a)id a New Viewpoint in Food Values. 145 



January 17, 1917, recognizes corn oil as edible, using the fol- 

 lowing phraseology: "Corn oil, maize oil, is the edible oil ob- 

 tained from the germ of Indian corn, maize {Zca ma/y.s L.)." 



In close connection with this subject the author will present 

 another paper on corn-starch flour, which is mentioned here 

 merely because this product, in connection with the oil, has 

 grown to be of considerable importance from the standpoint of 

 food economy. If corn flour can be used with a high-protein 

 flour in bread making, it is safe to say that this fact will have a 

 decidedly valuable commercial bearing, reducing the cost of 

 bread and at the same time increasing the value of the corn 

 products; but this whole question must be studied from the 

 point of view of nutritive values, and inasmuch as bread, as 

 well as corn oil, is dependent upon peculiar elements of nutri- 

 tion, it may be not out of place to state the new point of view 

 in regard to food values. A few salient and outstanding facts 

 only can be referred to in this paper. Suffice to say that in dis- 

 cussing foods we think of them, first of all, in terms of their 

 value in maintaining body weight, of maintaining body heat, 

 and of their power to promote normal body growth. Food- 

 stuffs, we say, contain five essential constituents — proteins, 

 fats, carbohydrates, salts and water. The former of these con- 

 stituents we associate with the reconstruction of depleted and 

 broken-down cellular protoplasm. Carbohydrates and fats we 

 think of primarily as energy producers, intimately concerned 

 with heat production. Salts maintain osmotic and acid and 

 base-equilibrium, and also enter into the structure of the com- 

 plex cell molecule. Water is the all-important ''disperse med- 

 ium" for the complex colloid which we to-day know the cell 

 to be. 



But when we have finished analyzing the composition of 

 foods for man and animals on this basis we have only come to 

 the beginning of the knowledge developed during the last few 

 years. The splendid work of Osborne and Mendel at the Con- 

 necticut Experiment Station and Yale University has brought 

 out very clearly that so far as the protein constituents of foods 

 are concerned, the amino acid and not the individual proteins 

 are of first importance. It matters far more which of the 

 amino acids are present than how much of them a food may 

 contain. Of the twenty-odd amino acids found in various food 



10— Sci. Acad.— 2163 



