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wheat we found to be an ideal food and one that exhibited the lowest percent
-age of protein waste of all the cereals. Poor quality of wheat, while superior
to juar, bajra or barley, gives too much nitrogenous residue for the bowel to
deal with to be satisfactory.
In order, therefore, to prevent excessive protein waste by the bowel good
first class wheat should replace the quality at present accepted for jail
consumption.
If the best quality of wheat were used, a smaller quantity would give as
good results, as regards the level of nitrogenous metabolism, as the present
amount shows. Therefore, being able to decrease the quantity of wheat in the
dietaries, by giving a better quality, we should tend to correct both the physio-
logical weaknesses of the dietaries above mentioned.
That it is possible to obtain better quality of wheat than accepted for jail
consumption, we have shown by working with a first class wheat in Benares
Jail.1
3. Regarding the other cereals, bajra, juar and barley, the absorption of
protein from them is so poor that they are unsuitable to form alone the
principal cereal of dietaries.2 This condemnation involves all the dietaries
except Diets A and E of the Jail Code. However, as the condemned diets
have been discontinued for years, our work had simply afforded an explanation
of their neglect. The fact that Diet E is used practically entirely in the feeding
of prisoners throughout the province can be explained by the superiority of its
nutritive value.
4. Of the different forms of pulse used in the dietaries arhar dal is
decidedly superior, showing 80 to 84 per cent. of its protein capable of absorp-
tion, while gram dal only has 64.2 per cent. absorbed. Gram dal probably
suffers considerably from the method of cooking in use, v i z . ,
p a r c h i n g . U r i d
dal shows 69 per cent. of protein absorption, but probably would give a higher
figure if made use of in diets in which wheat, instead of juar or bajra, formed
the principal cereal, and in which it was made use of in smaller quantities.
1 In connection with the quality of Indian wheat Church states—" Besides the general dryness of the grain
of Indian wheat, which, as imported in bulk into this country and analysed promptly, contains at least 2 per
cent. less moisture than average English wheat, the albuminoids are decidedly higher. I have never yet met with
an Indian wheat containing less than 10 per cent. of albuminoids; but a large number of samples of first-rate of
English, Canadian and Australian samples give numbers between 8 and 9." [Food-Grains of India.]
2 It is very probable the explanation of the low percentages of nitrogen absorption shown by these food
materials, and also rice in Bengal Jail Dietaries, is that the protein in these cereals does not exist in a form cap
- a b l e o f a b s o r p t i o n b y t h e h u m a n a l i m e n t a r y s y s t e m . I f t h i s e x p l a n a t i o n s h o u l d t u r n o u t t o b e t h e t r u e o n e , i t
would account for the great loss of protein in the fæces with dietaries into whose composition any of these cereals
enter at all largely. The superiority of the protein absorption of wheat would indicate that more of its nitrogen
is present in an assimilable form than is the case with bajra, juar, barley or rice.