The Composition ami Food Value of Bread. 1 



is of any real service to the body. Finally, those portions of 

 the food which have resisted the solvent action of the several 

 digestive juices, and have therefore failed to be absorl^ed into 

 the blood, are voided as fasces. 



It follows from this that in order to arrive at a just 

 estimate of the actual value to the body of any article of food, 

 it would be necessary to measure exactly how much, of the 

 various constituents of a known weight of that food are 

 absorbed from the intestine, into the blood. Unfortunately, 

 however, no one has as yet devised a method of making such 

 a measurement. Nevertheless it is possible to make a very 

 close estimate by finding out the weights of the various 

 constituents voided in the fasces when a known weight of 

 food is eaten. The amounts of protein, starch, phosphoric 

 acid, &c., voided, are subtracted from the amounts eaten, and 

 in this way an estimate is obtained of the amount digested and 

 presumably absorbed. This method has been applied to breads 

 made from various grades of flours by several investigators, and 

 the resiilts obtained throw a new light on the question at 

 issue. 



The figures given in the following table are obtained liy 

 averaging the results of a number of experiments carried out 

 in America on the lines indicated aliove. The separate 

 experiments are described in various bulletins of the U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture. They are easily accessible in Dr. 

 Hamill's Report to the Local Government Board, Cd. 5831. 



Table IV. 



Before discussing the bearing of these figures on the 

 question at issue a word of explanation is necessary. The 

 straight grade flours used in the experiments appear to have 

 been about equivalent to English ground flours of that grade, 

 forming about 70 per cent, of the grain. The term entire 

 flour, as already explained, is applied to flours from which 

 a variable proportion of the husk has been removed. They 

 probably correspond fairly accurately to our 80 per cent, or 

 "standard" flour. The wholemeal flours of course included 

 the whole of the grain. The experiments each covered only 



