Il8 MAINE AGRICULTUAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I905. 



demand, encouraged and stimulated by persistent advertising-, 

 for foods which may be quickly and easily digested. Perhaps it 

 is a natural outcome of the strenuous age in which we live that 

 the average business man is reluctant to devote the proper time 

 and attention to his meals, with the result that dyspepsia in its 

 various forms has become alarmingly prevalent. There has 

 thus arisen a class of food products whose chief claim upon our 

 attention is their alleged readiness to "slip into the tissues" of 

 the consumer without the usual tax upon the digestive organs^ 



Just now we are passing through what might very properly 

 be called the epoch of cereal breakfast foods. Never in our his- 

 tory have the cereal foods occupied so prominent a place in our 

 dietaries. Twenty-five years ago practically the only cereal 

 foods to be found upon our American market were wheat flour, 

 corn meal, hominy, and hulled corn. Wheat and oat meals had 

 been introduced by our Irish and Scotch immigrants, but their 

 use was far from general. Barley, rye and rice were used only 

 to a very limited extent. Today a half-hour's canvass of the 

 shops of our large towns or cities would reveal fifty or more 

 preparations of these cereals, most of which present special 

 claims to our attention. Scarcely a week passes that does not 

 see some new cereal claimant to the public favor and the list has- 

 grown to embarrassing proportions. Few of the brands appear 

 to be long-lived and it is safe to say that of those on sale today 

 fully one-half will disappear within three years or will survive 

 only on the top shelf of the country grocery, a food for worms 

 rather than for man. 



A class of foods that has come to occupy so prominent a place 

 in our dietaries certainly deserves more than a passing consid- 

 eration. Many of these preparations have been analyzed at this 

 Station and the results published in Bulletins 55* and 84. It 

 is proposed here to study these foods from a more general stand- 

 point. To do this, we must take into consideration not only 

 their chemical composition, but their palatability, digestibility, 

 ease of preparation, relative cost, the claims made for them, and 

 the extent to which these claims are made good. 



• Bulletin 55 is no longer available. 



