EXPERIMENTS UPON THE DIGESTIBILITY OF 

 BREAD WITH MEN. 



Chas. D. Woods and L. H. Merrill. 



In cooperation with the Nutrition Division of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, this Station is making inves- 

 tigations upon the nutritive value of wheat. While much study 

 has been given to this interesting field, very few results have 

 been obtained which are applicable to the conditions common in 

 this country. The European investigations have been made 

 with flours different from those in common use in America and 

 the breads have been made by methods unknown to bakers in 

 this land. The studies here reported are only a part of an inves- 

 tigation undertaken with the hope of accumulating data which 

 shall serve to answer the numerous questions arising as to the 

 effect of milling upon the nutritive value of the resulting flours. 

 The full account of these investigations will be given at a later 

 time in publications of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

 In the following pages there are given the results of the experi- 

 ments on the digestibility of different kinds of wheat flours. 



Analyses of Foods and Feces. 



The bread reserved for analysis was sliced and dried at a 

 temperature of about 60° C. The feces were dried on the tins 

 Ufion which they were deposited at 60° C. After removal from 

 the drying closets, the samples were allowed to stand for two 

 days exposed to the air of the sampling room. They were then 

 broken up in a mortar, ground in a mill so as to pass through a 

 sieve with round holes one-half millimeter in diameter, and bot- 

 tled for analysis. 



Methods of Analyses. — These were the official methods of the 

 Association of Official Agricultural Chemists. In the ash 

 determinations of the flour and bread, it was found necessary 

 to exhaust the charred mass with hot water before the incinera- 



