The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-11-16
WHITE FLOUR
VERSUS WHOLE
WHEAT BREAD

The white flour advocate assumes
that extreme lightness is the primary
essential of good bread. Yet such ex-
treme nghtness of bread has very lit
tie hygienic significance and none
whatever for the man who properly
masticates his food. It Is trick that
pleases the eye and pleases also the
baker for thereby he is enabled to
make a pound of bread fluff up and
look like bigger loaf.
So much the worse for the first
half of this seemingly scientific white
flour argument, for 1t is merely an
arugment for selling air and could
be as well used to sell beer that would
| raise a high collar if the foam were
bit more enduring. But the widely
proclaimed facts. upon which the
white flour interests have rested their
case for the last fifteen years is upon
| the digestive tests that prove white
flour to be six per cent. more diges-
tible than bread made from the gen.
uine whole ground wheat. These tests
were originally made by Professor
Snyder at the University of Minneso-
ia and were endorsed and published.
| by the United States Department of
| agriculture. The advocates of whole
wheat bread do not dispute the facts
las presented. What they do dispute
is the conclusions from these facts;
The facts are as follows: If one hum
dred pounds of whole wheat be
ground and made into bread and fed
\ to men with milk to round out the
diet). about eighty-seven per cent. of
| the energy yielding substance of the
bread is digested. If now this SAME
one hundred pounds of whole wheat
be mi1led by patent process, seventy
/ pounds will be made into white flour
and thirty pounds be rejected as bran,
shorts and germs and sold as cattle
feed. Bread made from the white
| flour will be SO per centA more
! digestib1e than the whole wheat bread
this six per cent. of increased di-
gestibility being the cornerstone of
the white flour argument.
But Of our hundred pounds Of
wheat only seventy pounds were made
into white flour bread. OF this sew
enty pounds, ninety-three per cent.
or sixty-f five pounds is digestible.
Hence with the rope of his own argu-
] ment the white flour chemist hangs
himself, when he sets out to prove
| the economy of white flour bread as a
war bread. By the facts which he
himself presents US we find that by
the white flour route but sixtyfive
pounds of the one hundred pounds Of
wheat is utilized to produce human
energy; whereas if the wheat be
1 ground as Graham flour and made
into bread, eighty-seven' pounds Of
the wheat substance is turned into
human energy.
White, bread Is six per cent more
digestible, but the use of white bread
| means loss to the Nation Of twenty
two per cent of the nations wheat
crop. But saving the nations wheat
| crop is only one aspect of the prob
lem. The mere statement that white
bread is six per cent more digestible
than the whole wheat bread seems
a very effective argument in it's ia
vor, and one, indeed, which would be
a very real argument if the ideal hu-
man food was one that would be COM
plete1y digestib1e. Unfortunately for
the white bread interests the human
digestive tract is not built with a view
of utilizing completely digestible
foods. There are certain physiologic-
al waste products that must be ex-
creted by way of the intestines or
self-poisoning and death would speed
lily ensue. With the natural primitive
diet of nan there was added to these
poisonous physiological wastes a GER
tain residue of indigestible fiber and
the combination of both substances
gave a sufficient bulk to permit of the
mechanical functioning of excretion.
If now with our, denatured and SUI
per- civilized food products, of which
white flour is the chief offender the
total bulk of this intestinal residue be
reduced until the bowels function i'm
/ properly the result is constipation,
which Is very properly described as
the mother of diseases.
! White flour bread is six per cent.
more digestible than the whole wheat