22 The Composition and Pood V((liie of Bread. * 



the same time it evidently pleases liis palate, a point which can 

 never be neglected in considering the value of a food. The 

 ideas as to the real cause of strength which I have stated above 

 have been translated into practice by a firm of milling engineers, 

 who have placed on the market an apparatus for spraying into 

 flour, as it goes through the mill, a solution of malt extract and 

 soluble phosphate. The former increases the diastatic capacity 

 of the flour, the latter effects a distinct improvement in the 

 toughness of the gluten, and thus improves the shape of the 

 loaf. These additions have been much criticised on the ground 

 that it is undesirable to allow any kind of foreign admixture 

 in the preparation of flour from wheat. This criticism seems 

 to be quite unreasonable ; first, because since both diastase and 

 soluble phosphate are invariably present in wheat flour, they 

 can hardly be described as foreign additions ; and secondly, 

 because, in the light of the Rothamsted and the Wisconsin pig 

 feeding experiments quoted above, and in the absence of definite 

 evidence to the contrary, it cannot be denied that _ inorganic 

 phosphates may add to the food value of the bread. If it is 

 possible, as the commercial success of the process indicates, 

 to add to the palatableness of the bread produced from home- 

 grown or other weak wheats by addition to the flour in the 

 mill of substances like malt extract and soluble phosphates, 

 which are admittedly harmless and may be of definite value 

 as food, it seems unreasonable to condemn their use, unless 

 for some very cogent reason which has not yet been stated. 



There remains only one point of view which has not been 

 discussed. It is sometimes contended that the various types of 

 brown bread retain the germ, which is completely removed 

 from the higher grade white flours by the roller milling process, 

 and that the presence of this germ endows the brown bread 

 with special properties which cannot be expressed in terms of 

 protein content, energy value, or in any other recognised man- 

 ner. It is certain for instance that, in Dr. Hopkins' experiments 

 with white and brown breads, the young rats fed on brown 

 bread grew altogether more rapidly than those fed on white 

 bread, the difference being quite out of proportion to the differ- 

 ence in protein content or energy value of the two foods. The 

 result is most striking, but Dr. Hopkins would be the last person 

 to argue that the results of an experiment on young rats fed on 

 bread only could be directly applied to the case of the average 

 population of the country of whose diet bread forms only about 

 one half. The other half of the diet, consisting as it does of 

 meat, milk, vegetables, &c., probably supplies in abundance the 

 unknown constituents to the presence of which in the germ its 

 special importance is attributed. Other experiments of Dr. 

 Hopkins have show^i for instance that these mysterious, but 



