2 BULLETIN 525, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
A survey of the literature revealed little except empirical informa- 
tion as regards the digestibility and nutritive value of millets. Kur- 
cheninov 1 studied the digestibility of proso, employing five men 
(physicians and dispensary assistants) of normal health as subjects, 
for experimental periods of three days each. He prepared the meal, 
which comprised 63 per cent of the entire grain, by mixing with 
water and cooking in the form of a thin gruel and a thick mush ; the 
protein of the basal ration, consisting of bouillon, butter, white bread, 
and cutlets, was found to be 91 per cent utilized, but when the gruel 
and mush were eaten in conjunction with the basal ration the protein 
utilization became 43.4 per cent and 43.9 per cent, respectively. 
According to Church, 2 the group of cereals which he designates 
as millets, including common millet and proso, are very important 
food crops in India. He states that common millet, although it may 
contain as much as 8 per cent crude fiber in the unhusked grain, is 
generally considered nutritious and digestible, and that it is pre- 
pared by boiling and eaten with or without the addition of sugar, 
or by parching. Proso is boiled and eaten with sugar and milk, 
used in curries, or in a form in which the slightly boiled grain is 
dried, parched in hot sand, sifted from the husks, and eaten with 
sour milk. 
As the millet meals were not found in the open market, a sufficient 
quantity of millet and proso for the purpose of the investigations 
was obtained from the Bureau of Plant Industry and ground in the 
experimental mills at the Bureau of Chemistry. The attempt was 
made to grind the millets to the same degree of fineness as the 
sorghum . meals used in the experiments referred to, but this was 
difficult, since the millets have a tough, woody, outer husk, relatively 
larger in amount than that of the common cereals. When the meal 
was sifted for bread making (using an ordinary flour sieve of 16 
meshes per inch) 40 per cent of millet and 29 per cent of proso 
(chiefly bran) were removed, quantities much larger than was the 
case with the other grains previously studied. In other words, the 
yield of meal of the same degree of fineness as that obtained with 
the sorghums was smaller. 
PREPARATION OF FOOD. 
The millets do not contain gluten and so, used alone, are not suit- 
able for making leavened bread. They can, however, be used for 
making unleavened bread and, in general, like the grain sorghums, 
are similar to corn meal in the ways they can be prepared for the 
table rather than to wheat and rye. 
1 Inaug. Diss., Imp. Mil. Med. Acad. [St. Petersburg], 1SS7. [Russian.] 
2 Food-grains of India. London : Chapman and Hall, Limited, 18S6, 1901. 
