WHEAT-MEAL VS. “ENTIRE FLOUR.”
Without doubt, certain brands of “whole-wheat flour,” so called, are a
great improvement over the article in universal demand among poor and rich
alike, the white flour of commerce, in this: they are, when made by honest
manufacturers, less impoverished than the white flours. In public and in
private, I have advised their use instead of white flour, but solely upon
the ground that the wheat is _less_ robbed of certain of its invaluable
constituents in the former; but I can not conceive it possible to separate
the hull from the kernel without real loss, even if the hull were, in
itself, objectionable, which, so far from being true, is, in my opinion, a
mistake and a very serious one. The theory upon which the objection to the
outside coat of the grain rests, is that this coat is composed of woody
fiber, entirely indigestible and devoid of nutritive matters, and, worst
of all, say these honest objectors, the hulls are coarse, sharp-edged, and
irritating to the stomach and intestines, and therefore injurious in their
action, especially in the case of “sensitive and delicately organized
individuals.” I will not stop to discuss the question as to the propriety
of the phrase _sensitive and delicately organized_, as applied to the
class of poor, suffering wretches who by reason of their gross habits——and
I mean simply the dietetic habits of the people, not the mechanic, the
artisan, the small trader, nor yet the factory hand, nor the wretched
poor, but the _human race_, from the kings, queens, and presidents all
along the line——who by reason, I repeat, of the universal system of diet,
have become dyspeptic. I can not, however, forbear the remark, that the
most sensitive and delicately organized individuals, among the most noble
of all animals next to man,——and in some aspects far superior to him,——the
horse, in his finest and most delicate state, finds a perfect food in the
whole grain, chewing it himself. I may be, in the minds of some, weakening
my argument by comparing the digestive apparatus of man with that of the
horse, but I am desirous of impressing upon the minds of my readers the
well-known but imperfectly considered fact, that our horse-fanciers,——who
dote on their hundred-thousand-dollar animals, and who would place before
them the most costly and complicated dishes, certainly would feed them on
the finest and whitest of flour,——“Imperial Granum” even, at drug-store
prices, if it were desirable, or even not pernicious in a health point of
view,——really keep their dearest pets on _bread and water_; and that,
because of this, and the absence of all the hot, stimulating articles,
solid or fluid, indulged in by their owners, and their regular and
moderate diet of _uncooked_ food, and their superior hygiene in certain
essential matters, our thorough-bred horses are generally saved from
becoming fat, sick, mean, wheezy, or dyspeptic, like their masters and
mistresses, men, women, and children.
We know that the microscope shows up the ragged edges of the hulls and
gives them a fearful aspect; but if the microscope could reason, and if it
was given to arguing all questions submitted to it, I fancy it would
speedily silence these objections to wheat-meal, so far as they rest upon
the matter of the coarseness and the irritating capacity of the hull, by
asking the microscopist to take a little glance at the stomach itself: an
internal view of the digestive tract would disclose the fact that, even in
the case of the most “sensitive and finely organized” subject, the lining
of the stomach, for example, bears a stronger resemblance to a _quartz
mill_ than do these terrible hulls to sticks and stones. The trouble has
been with those who seek to improve too much over Nature’s methods, and
especially is this the case in the question under discussion, they have
reasoned mainly from one side of the question. Machinery has accomplished
no end of good things, and without doubt has even greater victories yet in
store, in its legitimate field; but that field is not in the line of
improving on the food that Nature provides for us humans. It can and does
improve over the old methods of sowing, reaping, threshing, and cleansing
the various grains——no one desires to dispute this; but when the ripe,
clean kernel of wheat, for instance, is placed before us, the office of
machinery is ended, except so far as crushing the grain for those whose
teeth or temper will not admit of chewing it. A shrewd though illiterate
stable keeper said to me, in advocating whole, instead of cracked corn for
horses and cattle, “it gets the juice of their teeth, and does them twice
as much good. Give them meal, or cracked corn, and they don’t have to chew
it long enough to get the right action of the saliva.”
People who neglect the most obvious hygienic rules, thereby bringing upon
themselves sickness and pain, and search for special articles of diet that
may seem to promise relief, remind me of a junk-dealer who would pass by
old stoves, pots, kettles, and crowbars, and search for a needle in a
hay-stack! The theory of the anti-wheat-meal men seems plausible at first
sight, and it has been held, temporarily, by some very sound men; but one
after another these have dropped it as untenable. To be sure, the ranks
are kept full by new recruits, who join faster than the _thinkers_ fall
out. There are a thousand dyspeptics for every discerning man, and, in any
event, all such——all persons, in fact, are to be congratulated when they
adopt a compromise in the shape of fine flour which claims to give them
all the essential elements of the wheat, and yet save their “delicate” and
sensitive stomachs needless labor and irritation. But I find that the
class who are _saving lives_ constantly, hold to the entire meal as the
only means of securing perfect bread——the staff of life.
Says Oswald: “We can not breathe pure oxygen. For analogous reasons bran
flour [whole meal] makes better bread than bolted flour; meat and
saccharine fruits are healthier than meat extracts and pure glucose. In
short, artificial extracts and compounds are, on the whole, less wholesome
than the palatable products of nature. In the case of bran-flour and
certain fruits with a large percentage of wholly innutritious matter,
chemistry fails to account for this fact, but biology suggests the mediate
cause: the normal type of our physical constitution dates from a period
when the digestive organs of our (frugivorous) ancestors adapted
themselves to such food——a period compared with whose duration the age of
grist-mills and made dishes is but of yesterday.”
This doctoring of the cereals can never prove of service in the end,
except to the manufacturers and dealers; these “preparations,” however
honestly made, and supposing for argument’s sake that the machinery
accomplishes what the manufacturers intend, will never, in and of
themselves,——_i. e._, except so far as they take the place of _white
flour_——prove beneficial to mankind, and least of all to sick people,
valetudinarians, and the sedentary classes,——the very ones who need the
best. Imagine a constipated dyspeptic, with a heavy fur coat on his
tongue, and, of course, a heavier one on the lining of his stomach——his
entire alimentary canal so covered with this morbid growth that digestion
and absorption are well-nigh prohibited——alarmed lest the microscopic
particles of wheat-hulls should injure his delicate and sensitive inwards!
“Delicate!” “sensitive!” why, it takes half a cupful of salts to move
them, and that but faintly, while a pint of strong coffee makes no
impression; when if they were even normally sensitive a tablespoonful of
the former, or a single cup of the latter, would purge them violently.
Sensitive! they are _dead_, or at least dying. Why, for this class of
patients, I would sooner _add the straw_ than remove the hull, as better
calculated, by all odds, to meet the necessities of their condition. On
the other hand, when the disease assumes the opposite form——when the
tongue is raw, and the intestinal tract acutely inflamed, and from any
cause preternaturally sensitive——there is but one thing in the Materia
Medica of Nature that is absolutely fit to swallow, and that is _pure
water_. (See Chronic Dyspepsia.) It matters not what else is comforting,
temporarily,——medicine, gruel, beef-tea, milk, or what not,——the comfort
and advantage are derived solely from the water, which constitutes
three-fourths to nine-tenths of the whole; the other elements being
injurious, and, often enough, fatal, preventing as they do the healing of
the inflamed mucous membrane.