JO MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I904. 



in protein, it is dark in color, and because of the poor quality of 

 its gluten has little expansive power and makes a very inferior 

 loaf. The middlings contain much of the germ, the aleurone 

 layer of the bran, and finely ground particles of the outer coat- 

 ings. It is usually high in protein content, but with practically 

 no gluten. It is probable that much of the laxative qualities no- 

 ticed in graham flour and which Lawes and Gilbert attributed to 

 the coarse particles of bran, are in realty due to the character of 

 the protein and mineral compounds of the aleurone layer and the 

 germ. For while entire wheat flour is not so much of a laxative 

 as graham, it possesses this property to such a degree that the 

 claims made by some manufacturers that it is a "complete rem- 

 edy for constipation" would probably hold true in most cases. 



The low grade flours and the middlings carry quite high per- 

 centages of ash which are valuable in nutrition. All these nutri- 

 ents found in the low grade flour and middlings enter into the 

 entire wheat flour, and upon them depend the differences be- 

 tween entire wheat flour and patent flour. 



ENTIRE WHEAT FLOUR AND STANDARD PATENT FLOUR FROM THE 

 SAME KIND OF WHEAT COMPARED CHEMICALLY. 



In the investigations upon the nutritive value of bread made 

 by the Nutrition Division of the Office of Experiment Stations 

 of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, four sets of analyses of 

 the graham flour, the entire wheat flour, and the standard patent 

 flour, manufactured from the same cleaned No. 1 hard north- 

 western grown spring wheats, and three sets of analyses of entire 

 wheat flour and standard patent flour, manufactured from softer 

 winter wheats, were made and reported in the bulletins of that 

 office. The average of the results of these analyses are given in 

 the table which follows. 



