67S 



MAIZE 



CHAP. 

 XIV. 



632. Probable Increase in Demand among the White Races. 

 — Increasing knowledge of the value of maize as an article of 

 human food is increasing the demand in Europe. A set of 

 recipes for the use of maize in domestic cookery, published by 

 the Transvaal Department of Agriculture and now in its fifth 

 edition, has done much to stimulate its use in South Africa. 

 The increase in population among the wheat-consuming peoples 

 of the world, and the threatened shortage in the world's wheat 

 supply, should also tend to increase the consumption of maize. 



633. Advantages of Maize as an Article of Food. — Maize is 

 an important food-stuff, whether for man or for his domestic 

 animals. It is more highly nutritious, digestible, and whole- 

 some than is usually recognized. In total amount of digestible 

 nutrients it is only excelled by wheat, and then only to the 

 extent of about 2 per cent (2 '2), as is shown in the following 

 table: — 



Table CXVI. 



TOTAL DIGESTIBLE NUTRIENTS IN 100 LBS. OF SEVERAL 

 CEREALS. 



Director W. A. Henry (1) observes that, considering the 

 nutrition it carries, and the market price, maize is by far the 

 cheapest food offered to mankind over a large part of the 

 civilized world. That it has not been more generally used 

 can be explained only in part. In the first place, maize meal 

 alone cannot be made into a light, porous loaf, as can flour 

 from the wheat grain, owing to differences in the character of 

 its gluten. Again, when reduced to meal by grinding, the oil 

 of the grain, and especially that in the embryo, soon becomes 

 rancid, and the meal loses its palatability ; this trouble is 

 remedied in part by processes of manufacture in which the 



