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DIGESTIBILITY OF CEREAL BREAKFAST FOODS. 209 
the outer coat, or bran. Finely ground bran appears to be some- 
what more available than the coarser material, but the finest 
of it is less available than white flour. The lower availability 
of the protein of the breakfast cereals as compared with that of 
the graham bread may doubtless be due to the coarser condition 
of the former. 
It is possible, of course, that the coefficients of availability of 
the nutrients of the food other than cereal should be smaller for 
the subjects of these experiments than those assumed for the 
purpose of estimating the availability of the cereals. In that 
case, the coefficients for the nutrients of the cereals would be 
larger than those given in the table above. It is believed, how- 
ever, that the factors referred to were reasonably correct for 
these subjects, and that the results as computed for the cereals 
are not far from the truth; but even if the factors were incor- 
rect, the computed coefficients for the different. cereals would 
still be comparable with each other, because the same factors 
were used in each case. “The same factors were also used in 
computing the results of the experiments with breads, so that 
the comparison given in the table above is warranted, and the 
deductions drawn from the data there are valid. 
CONCLUSION. 
In these experiments, the availability of the different brands 
of breakfast foods, all said to consist largely of wheat, was 
found to be smaller, especially in the case of the protein, than 
that of the nutrients of wheat flour. Two of the three different 
brands used in the experiments, though made at different fac- 
tories, were quite similar in character, but the third was some- 
what different from either. The uniformity of the results is 
therefore the more interesting. 
The total number of experiments, and the number of differ- 
ent brands included, is too small to warrant final conclusions 
from the results with respect to the availability of wheat break- © 
fast foods in general. It is interesting to note, however, that 
the results here reported are in very close accord with those of 
other experiments with the same and different kinds of wheat 
‘breakfast foods made elsewhere but still awaiting publication. 
