DIGESTIBILITY OF THE GRAIN SORGHUMS. 3 



The results of these investigations as a whole indicate that while 

 it is best to use some wheat flour to make up for the lack of gluten 

 in the sorghum meal a fairly large proportion of the meal may be 

 satisfactorily used in admixture with wheat flour in the preparation 

 of common foods. 



According to Davis 1 it has been noted that dwarf kafir will pop 

 like pop corn. Tests made in connection with the work of the depart- 

 ment showed that this was true of dwarf kafir and of feterita and 

 dwarf milo as well, while kaoliang, it was found, scorched without 

 popping. The kafir when popped was tender and of good flavor, 

 closely resembling ordinary pop corn in miniature. Fewer kernels of 

 feterita and dwarf milo popped, and the taste of these, moreover, 

 was comparatively raw and less agreeable than that of the kafir. 

 The kaoliang became quite crisp and tender without popping and 

 had an agreeable taste. It should be noted in trying to pop the sor- 

 ghums that, owing to the small size of the grain, the popper should 

 be lined with wire netting to prevent its falling through. In similar 

 tests with some of the millets no noticeable success was obtained in 

 trying to pop the grains. 



Since a survey of the literature indicates that while digestion exper- 

 iments with animals are fairly common, few if any studies with man 

 have been reported, it seemed desirable to determine experimentally 

 the digestibility of the grain sorghums, preparing them in different 

 ways for eating, in order to secure data as to their value in human 



nutrition. 



MILLING THE GRAIN SORGHUMS. 



Realizing that considerable differences in the chemical composition 

 of any grain occur as a result of variations in climatic and soil condi- 

 tions, an attempt was made to obtain a supply of the different grains 

 grown under identically the same conditions, and through the coop- 

 eration of the Bureau of Plant Industry standardized grain was 

 secured from the cereal field station at Amarillo, Tex. All the 

 grains, including the corn and wheat which were used for comparison, 

 were milled in the Bureau of Chemistry, the same mill being used for 

 each grain and especial care exercised to secure meals of the same 

 fineness. Milled in this way, the product in each case more nearly 

 resembled meal than flour; consequently "meal" will be the descrip- 

 tive term used throughout this discussion. A record was kept of the 

 proportions of the different grains passing through the 16, 20, 40, 70, 

 and 109 mesh sieves, but only that portion of the meal which passed 

 through the 16-mesh sieve (that is, the size of sieve commonly used 

 by the housekeeper) was used in the preparation of the experimental 

 diet. The amount of kafir bran retained on the sieve and considered 

 too coarse to use in the digestion experiments was about 21 per cent 



i Texas Dept. Agr. Bui. 42 (1915), pp. 18. 



