


NUTRITIVE VALUE OF CEREAL PREPARATIONS. wih 
This much is quite certain, however; cereal food products are 
very desirable articles of diet, and the prepared cereal products 
now meet a very widespread demand. If they were sold more 
cheaply, and people understood more about them, very probably 
there would be a considerable permanent demand for them. In 
view of the fact that there is such a wide difference in the cost 
of different brands, a summary of our present knowledge con- 
cerning the actual nutritive value and relative economy of this 
class of food materials would seem especially desirable. Inas- 
much as a number of experiment stations, among them this 
one, have been making special studies of these products, con- 
siderable knowledge concerning them is now available. It is 
the purpose of the present article to summarize the information 
that has been thus far obtained. 
ORIGIN OF THE BREAKFAST FOOD. 
The use of ‘‘ porridge’’ made by simply boiling coarsely 
ground wheat or oats has long been general. ‘The adoption of 
such materials very naturally followed the immigration Oltue 
English, Irish and Scotch races to this country, and the taste 
for porridge has persisted and developed here. 
The coarsely ground wheat and oat meals required prolonged 
boiling to render them palatable and more capable of digestion. 
An.important improvement in this respect was introduced in 
the manufacture of rolled oats. By this process the grain is 
first softened by steaming, then crushed between rollers and 
dried. The result of such treatment is that the material is » 
already partially cooked, and the cell walls of the grain are 
ruptured by the crushing, so that the product can be prepared 
for the table in much less time than the untreated oatmeal. 
Similar treatment was eventually applied to wheat, corn, and 
rice, and other methods of treatment were also devised, result- 
ing in the production of a considerable variety of dietary articles 
that were found to be palatable and easily prepared for the table. 
In earlier times ‘‘ porridge’’ more commonly comprised the 
whole or a large part of at least one meal of the day, usually 
breakfast. In more recent years the prepared cereal products 
that have largely supplanted the coarser boiled meals have taken 
a less important place in the diet, and are now used chiefly as 
one of several dishes in a meal, instead of forming the bulk of 
