

NUTRITIVE VALUE OF CEREAL PREPARATIONS. 231 
cooked by boiling. The second group includes the wheat prod- 
ucts that have been cooked and are ready to eat as purchased, 
such as shredded or parched wheat. None of the products in- 
cluded in this group had been malted, however. ‘The malted 
wheat products, which are also cooked and ready to eat when 
taken from the package, are included in the third group. 
The preparation of mixed grains included in the table was 
claimed to be a mixture of wheat and barley. It was cooked 
and ready to eat as purchased. 
The oat preparations consisted of different brands of rolled 
oats. ‘They were all cooked in the usual manner before eating. 
The differences in the proportions of carbohydrates digested 
from the different products are very small, and the amount of 
energy actually available to the body was even more uniform. 
As regards protein, the proportions digested from the different 
products were much the same except in the case of the boiled 
wheat, in which it was noticeably higher. It would appear, 
then, that at least so far as the subjects of these experiments 
are concerned the more elaborately prepared products had no 
advantage over the simpler preparations. Indeed, because of 
the larger proportion of protein digested, this being, as already 
explained, the most essential nutrient, whatever advantage 
there was would rather appear to be with the preparations that 
were neither malted nor cooked when purchased. 
This difference in the digestibility of the uncooked and the 
cooked and malted wheat products was very likely due largely 
to the fact that the uncooked preparations were those from 
which the coarse branny material had been removed, whereas 
the cooked preparations were those which contained the whole 
of the wheat kernel including the bran. At least it has been 
found in similar experiments with different grades of wheat 
flour that those containing the bran are less digestible than those 
from which it had been removed in milling. From the results 
of a large number of experiments with bread from such flours it 
has been found that they compare in digestibility as follows: 
PROTEIN. CARBOHYDRATES. 
White bread, - - : - SS percentusg Oo pemecent, 
Entire wheat bread, g “ $2 per cent. 94 per cent. 
Graham bread, = a : 76 per cent. go per cent. 
