24 The MilUny of Wheat in the United Kingdom. 



deficiency in practice is by no means great. It is on the average 

 more than compensated by the greater digestibility of the 

 protein of the higher grade flom-, so that the tissues of the 

 body extract as much protein from white bread as from brown. 

 The energy value of white bread also is at least equal to that 

 of brown bread. The relative demand on the part of the public 

 shows clearly that white bread is generally preferred. In the 

 present state of knowledge there seems no definite reason for 

 concluding that the pu])lic taste is wrong, 



T. B. Wood. 



School of Agriculture, 

 Cambridge. 



THE MILLING OF WHEAT IN THE UNITED 

 KINGDOM. 



By a. E. Humphries, 



A past President of the National Associatijn of British and 

 Irish Millers. 



1 HAVE recently been shown by a veteran miller some letters 

 written by his grandfather in 1839. They record that in 

 December, 1800, and March, 1801, wheat realised lOZ. per 

 quarter, and that by an Order in Council millers were pro- 

 hibited from making " households " flour (the grade used for 

 making ordinary white bread), and " were obliged to use a 

 coarse cloth, so as only to take out the coarse ' bran ' " : but 

 " the alteration was not found to answer and the millers were 

 allowed again to make ' households.' " In I'Jll wheat has not 

 been scarce or unduly high in price, and no administrative 

 order has been made commanding that bread shall be made 

 only from coarse flour, but we have seen the long continued 

 and apparently unsuccessful missionary eff'orts of the Bread and 

 Food Reform League taken up ])y an influential portion of the 

 British press, and we have been exhorted, with semblance of 

 dogmatic infallibility, to seek health, nervous energy, and 

 personal beauty in bread made from flour conforming to a 

 certain formula. The complete miller knows something of 

 dietetics, chemistry, and other sciences, but is not didactic. 

 He listens attentively but impassively so long as " bread 

 reformers " confine themselves to advocacy of their doctrines, 

 and is willing to supplj^ any form of wheaten product for 

 whicli there is a substantial demand. 



No responsible advocate of change in our breadstuff's has 

 been unable to obtain in a proper form at a reasonable ]irice 

 just what he requires. But millers are human. They have 



