


DIGESTIBILITY OF CEREAL BREAKFAST FOODS. 207 
The total ration in the experiments with breakfast foods con- 
tained much larger proportions of milk and cream, and much 
smaller proportions of cereal material, than that in the experi- 
ments with the different kinds of bread. In that case, if the 
availability of the nutrients were the same in the cereal break- 
fast foods as in the bread, the coefficients for the total diet con- 
taining the breakfast cereals should be larger than those for the 
diet containing the bread, because the nutrients of the milk 
_and cream are more available than those of cereal food products. 
It will be seen from a comparison of the data in the table above 
that the coefficients for protein in the diet containing the break- 
fast foods are a little smaller than the lowest for the diets con- 
taining the bread. The differences in respect to the other 
nutrients and energy are for the most part less noticeable, but 
still on the whole in favor of the breads. ‘The inference 1s, 
therefore, that the nutrients of the cereal breakfast foods were 
less available than those of the breads. ‘That this was actually 
the case is brought out in the following consideration of the 
estimated coefficients of the cereal portion of the diet alone. 
Results for the cereal part of the diet.—The more important 
feature of these experiments is in the results of the computa- 
tions of the availability of the nutrients and energy of the 
cereal part of the diet. These estimates were made, as pre- 
viously described in detail, by assuming that the availability of 
the articles of the diet aside from the cereals, that is, the milk, 
cream and sugar, would be the same as has been found in other 
experiments with such materials. It has already been ex- 
plained that the computations cannot be made for fat because 
the quantity of fat in the cereal foods was so small. The 
coefficients of availability as thus computed for the cereal alone 
are given in the lower portion of Table 87. 
In the experiments with Grape-Nuts, the coefficients for 
carbohydrates are practically the same for the three subjects. 
There is a very small variation in the figures for energy. The 
variation in the result for protein is a little larger, the range 
being from 67.9 per cent. with one subject to 72.8 per cent. with 
another; the result with the third subject is practically a mean 
between these two. As was explained in regard to the total 
diet, these agreements are very satisfactory. 
