2 BULLETIN 525, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



A survey of the literature revealed little except empirical informa- 

 tion as regards the digestibility and nutritive value of millets. Kur- 

 cheninov ^ studied the digestibility of proso, employing five men 

 (physicians and dispensary assistants) of normal health as subjects, 

 for experimental periods of three days each. He prepared the meal, 

 which comprised 63 per cent of the entire grain, by mixing with 

 water and cooking in the form of a thin gruel and a thick mush ; the 

 protein of the basal ration, consisting of bouillon, butter, white bread, 

 and cutlets, was found to be 91 per cent utilized, but when the gruel 

 and mush were eaten in conjunction with the basal ration the protein 

 utilization became 43.4 per cent and 43.9 per cent, respectively. 



According to Church,^ the group of cereals which he designates 

 as millets, including common millet and proso, are very important 

 food crops in India. He states that common millet, although it may 

 contain as much as 8 per cent crude fiber in the unhusked grain, is 

 generally considered nutritious and digestible, and that it is pre- 

 pared by boiling and eaten with or without the addition of sugar, 

 or by parching. Proso is boiled and eaten with sugar and milk, 

 used in curries, or in a form in which the slightly boiled grain is 

 dried, parched in hot sand, sifted from the husks, and eaten with 

 sour milk. 



As the millet meals were not found in the open market, a sufficient 

 quantity of millet and proso for the purpose of the investigations 

 was obtained from the Bureau of Plant Industry and ground in the 

 experimental mills at the Bureau of Chemistry. The attempt was 

 made to grind the millets to the same degree of fineness as the 

 sorghum meals used in the experiments referred to, but this was 

 difficult, since the millets have a tough, woody, outer husk, relatively 

 larger in amount than that of the common cereals. When the meal 

 was sifted for bread making (using an ordinary flour sieve of 16 

 meshes per inch) 40 per cent of millet and 29 per cent of proso 

 (chiefly bran) were removed, quantities much larger than was the 

 case with the other grains previously studied. In other words, the 

 yield of meal of the same degree of fineness as that obtained with 

 the sorghums was smaller. 



PREPARATION OF FOOD. 



The millets do not contain gluten and so, used alone, are not suit- 

 able for making leavened bread. They can, however, be used for 

 making unleavened bread and, in general, like the grain sorghums, 

 are similar to corn meal in the ways they can be prepared for the 

 table rather than to wheat and rye. 



1 Inaug. Diss., Imp. Mil. Med. Acad. [St. Petersburg], 1887. [Russian.] 

 ^Food-grains of India. London: Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1886, 1901. 



