A few plain words on this subject may not be unacceptable to the popular
reader at the present time.
We are fond of what is agreeable to the eye as well as pleasant to the
taste, and therefore we love to have our bread made of the whitest and
finest of the wheat. Attaching superior excellence to what thus pleases
the eye, we call the good Scotch bannock an inferior food, and the
wholesome black bread of the north of Europe a disgusting article of
diet. When our experience and knowledge are local and confined, our
opinions necessarily partake of a similar character.
In regard to the different qualities of wheaten flour, our judgments are
not so severe. All things which pertain to this aristocratic grain--this
staff of English life--like the liveries and horses of a great man--are
treated with a certain degree of respect. Still, they are only the
appendages of the noble seed, and the more thoroughly they are got rid
of, the better the kernel is supposed to become.
In many of our old-fashioned families, indeed, the practice still
lingers of baking bread from the whole meal of wheat for common use in
the kitchen or hall, and for occasional consumption on the master's
table. An enthusiastic physician also now and then rouses himself, and
does battle with the national organs of taste on behalf of the darker
bread, and the browner flour--and dyspeptic old gentlemen or mammas who
have over-pampered their sickly darlings, listen to his fervid warnings,
and the star of the brown loaf is for a month or two in the ascendant.
But gradually the warning sound is lost to the alarmed ear, and the
pulses of the commoved air waft it on to mingle with the thousand other
long-quenched voices which people the distant realms of space, and form
together that unutterable harmony which, by consent of the poets, is
named the music of the spheres.
There are times, however, when good men, though aware of this passing
tendency of human efforts, and of the thankless impotency of a struggle
against the public voice--that _vox populi_ which wise men (so-called)
have pronounced to be also _vox Dei_--will nevertheless return to what
they believe to be a useful though unvalued labour. The present is one
in which any thing which can be said in favour of the less-valued parts
of our imperial grain, will be more readily listened to than at any
other period in the life-time of the existing generation; and being
listened to, may be productive of the greatest national good.
I propose, therefore, to show, in an intelligible manner, that whole
meal flour is really more nourishing, as well as more wholesome, than
fine white flour as food for man.
The solid parts of the human body consist, principally, of three several
portions: the fat, the muscle, and the bone. These three substances are
liable to constant waste in the living body, and therefore must be
constantly renewed from the food that we eat. The vegetable food we
consume contains these three substances almost ready formed. The plant
is the brick-maker. The animal voluntarily introduces these bricks into
its stomach, and then involuntarily--through the operation of the
mysterious machinery within--picks out these bricks, transports them to
the different parts of the body, and builds them into their appropriate
places. As the miller at his mill throws into the hopper the unground
grain, and forthwith, by the involuntary movements of the machinery,
receives in his several sacks the fine flour, the seconds, the
middlings, the pollard, and the bran; so in the human body, by a still
more refined separation, the fat is extracted and deposited here, the
muscular matter there, and the bony material in a third locality, where
it can not only be stored up, but where its presence is actually at the
moment necessary.
Again, the fluid parts of the body contain the same substances in a
liquid form, on their way to or from the several parts of the body in
which they are required. They include also a portion of salt or saline
matter which is dissolved in them, as we dissolve common salt in our
soup, or Epsom salts in the pleasant draughts with which our doctors
delight to vex us. This saline matter is also obtained from the food.
Now, it is self-evident, that that food must be the most nourishing
which supplies all these ingredients of the body most abundantly on the
whole, or in proportions most suited to the actual wants of the
individual animal to which it is given.
How stands the question, then, in regard to this point between the brown
bread and the white--the fine flour, and the whole meal of wheat?
The grain of wheat consists of two parts, with which the miller is
familiar--the inner grain and the skin that covers it. The inner grain
gives the pure wheat flour; the skin, when separated, forms the bran.
The miller cannot entirely peel off the skin from his grain, and thus
some of it is unavoidably ground up with his flour. By sifting, he
separates it more or less completely: his seconds, middlings, &c., owing
their colour to the proportion of brown bran that has passed through the
sieve along with the flour. The whole meal, as it is called, of which
the so-named brown _household bread_ is made, consists of the entire
grain ground up together--used as it comes from the mill-stones
unsifted, and therefore containing all the bran.
The first white flour, therefore, may be said to contain no bran, while
the whole meal contains all that grew naturally upon the grain.
What is the composition of these two portions of the seed? How much do
they respectively contain of the several constituents of the animal
body? How much of each is contained also in the whole grain?