Taking the three ingredients, therefore, together, the whole meal is
one-half more valuable for fulfilling all the purposes of nutrition than
the fine flour--and especially it is so in regard to the feeding of the
young, the pregnant, and those who undergo much bodily fatigue.
It will not be denied that it is for a wise purpose that the Deity has
so intimately associated, in the grain, the several substances which are
necessary for the complete nutrition of animal bodies. The above
considerations show how unwise we are in attempting to undo this natural
collocation of materials. To please the eye and the palate, we sift out
a less generally nutritive food,--and, to make up for what we have
removed, experience teaches us to have recourse to animal food of
various descriptions.
It is interesting to remark, even in apparently trivial things, how all
nature is full of compensating processes. We give our servants household
bread, while we live on the finest of the wheat ourselves. The mistress
eats that which pleases the eye more, the maid what sustains and
nourishes the body better.
But the whole meal is more wholesome, as well as more nutritive. It is
on account of its superior wholesomeness that those who are experienced
in medicine usually recommend it to our attention. Experience in the
laws of digestion brings us back to the simple admixture found in the
natural seed. It is not an accidental thing that the proportions in
which the ingredients of a truly sustaining food take their places in
the seeds on which we live, should be best fitted at once to promote the
health of the sedentary scholar, and to reinvigorate the strength of the
active man when exhausted by bodily labour.
Some may say that the preceding observations are merely theoretical; and
may demand the support of actual trial, before they will concede that
the selection of the most nourishing and wholesome diet is hereafter to
be regulated by the results of chemical analysis. The demand is
reasonable in itself, and the so-called deductions of theory are
entitled only to the rank of probable conjectures, till they have been
tested by exact and repeated trials.
But such in this case have been made; and our theoretical considerations
come in only to confirm the results of previous experiments--to explain
why these results should have been obtained, and to extend and enforce
the practical lessons which the results themselves appeared to
inculcate.
Thus, from the experiments of Majendie and others, it was known that
animals which in a few weeks died if fed only upon fine flour, lived
long upon whole meal bread. The reason appears from our analytical
investigations. The whole meal contains in large quantity the three
forms of matter by which the several parts of the body are sustained, or
successively renewed. We may feed a man long upon bread and water only,
but unless we wish to kill him also, we must have the apparent cruelty
to restrict him to the coarser kinds of bread. The charity which should
supply him with fine white loaves instead, would in effect kill him by a
lingering starvation.
Again, the pork-grower who buys bran from the miller, wonders at the
remarkable feeding and fattening effect which this apparently woody and
useless material has upon his animals. The surprise ceases, however,
and the practice is encouraged, and extended to other creatures, when
the researches of the laboratory explain to him what the food itself
contains, and what his growing animal requires.
Economy as well as comfort follow from an exact acquaintance with the
wants of our bodies in their several conditions, and with the
composition of the various articles of diet which are at our command. In
the present condition of the country, this economy has become a vital
question. It is a kind of Christian duty in every one to practise it as
far as his means and his knowledge enable him.
Perhaps the amount of the economy which would follow the use of whole
meal instead of fine flour, may not strike every one who reads the above
observations. The saving arises from two sources.
First, The amount of husk, separated by the miller from the wheat which
he grinds, and which is not sold for human use, varies very much. I
think we do not over-estimate it, when we consider it as forming
one-eighth of the whole. On this supposition, eight pounds of wheat
yield seven of flour consumed by man, and one of pollard and bran which
are given to animals--chiefly to poultry and pigs. If the whole meal be
used, however, eight pounds of flour will be obtained, or eight people
will be fed by the same weight of grain which only fed seven before.
Again, we have seen that the whole meal is more nutritious--so that this
coarser flour will go farther than an equal weight of the fine. The
numbers at which we arrived, from the results of analysis, show that,
taking all the three sustaining elements of the food into consideration,
the coarse is one-half more nutritive than the fine. Leaving a wide
margin for the influence of circumstances, let us suppose it only
one-eighth more nutritive, and we shall have now nine people nourished
equally by the same weight of grain, which, when eaten as fine flour,
would support only seven. _The wheat of the country_, in other words,
_would in this form go one-fourth farther than at present_.
But some one may remark, if all this good is to come from the mere use
of the bran, why not recommend it to be withheld from the pigs, and
consume it by man in some way alone? This would involve no change in the
practice of our millers, and little in the habits and bread of the great
mass of the population.
But such a course, if possible, would not bring us to the economical end
we wish to attain. Suppose it could be made palatable and eaten by man,
little comparative saving would be effected.
First, because, when eaten alone, the fine flour will not go so far as
when mixed with a certain proportion of bran: that is to say,--a given
weight of fine flour will produce an increased nutritive effect when
mixed with the bran: greater than is due to the constituents of the bran
taken alone. The mixture of the two in reality increases the virtues of
both. Again, if eaten alone, bran would prove too difficult, and
therefore slow of digestion in most stomachs. Much would thus pass,
unexhausted of its nutritive matter, through the alimentary canal, as
whole oats often do through that of horses, and thus a considerable
waste would ensue.
And further, supposing all to be dissolved in the stomach, there would
still, of necessity, be a waste of material, since the bran actually
contains a larger proportion of bone material and saline matter compared
with its other ingredients, than the body, in its natural healthy state,
can make use of. All this excess must, therefore, be rejected by the
body, and, as nutritive matter, for the time be wasted.
Lastly, it is doubtful if bran alone contains enough of starch, or of
any substitute for it, to meet the other demands of the human system. I
have not spoken of the use of the starch of the grain in the preceding
observations, because, as both whole meal and fine flour contain a
sufficient quantity of it to supply the wants of the living animal, it
was unnecessary to the main object of this paper. But with bran the case
is different. It is doubtful if the purposes of the starch could be
fully, and with sufficient speed, fulfilled by the ingredients which, in
the bran, take the place of starch in the flour. The cellular fibre or
woody matter, of which it contains a considerable proportion, is too
slowly soluble in the stomachs of ordinary men. While, therefore, much
of it would pass through the body undigested, it would require to be
eaten in far larger proportions than its composition indicates, if the
body was to be supported, and thus a further waste would be incurred.
On the whole, therefore, we come back to the whole meal, as the most
economical as well as the most nutritive and wholesome form in which the
grain of wheat can be consumed. The Deity has done far better for us, by
the natural mixtures to be found in the whole seed, than we can do for
ourselves. The materials, both in form and in proportion, are adjusted
in each seed, as wheat, in a way more suitable to us than any which,
with our present knowledge, we appear able to devise.
A word to our Scottish readers, before we conclude. We do not recommend
to you even the whole meal of wheat as a substitute for your oatmeal or
your oaten-cake. The oat is more nutritive even than the whole grain of
wheat, taken weight for weight. For the growing boy, for the
hard-working man, and for the portly matron, oatmeal contains the
materials of the most hearty nourishment. This it owes in part to its
peculiar chemical composition, and in part to its being, as it is used
in Scotland, a kind of whole meal. The finely sifted oatmeal of
Yorkshire and Lancashire is not so agreeable to a Scottish taste, and, I
believe, is not so nutritious, as the rounder and coarser meal of the
more northern counties.
While, therefore, the whole meal of wheat is superior to the fine flour,
in economy, in nutritive power, and in wholesomeness, and therefore
should be preferred by those who _must_ live upon wheat,--in all these
respects the oat has still the advantage, and therefore ought
religiously to be adhered to. You owe it to the experience of your
forefathers, for a thousand years, not to forsake it.
_Lurham, 19th May, 1847._