THE WAR-TIME IMPORTANCE OF WHEAT AND OTHER CEREALS
When the United States was called on to supply the Allies with much of
its wheat and flour, we fortunately found at hand a plentiful supply
of a great variety of other cereals. The use of corn was, of course,
not an experiment--generations of Southerners have flourished on it.
But we also had oats, rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, and such local
products as the grain sorghums, which are grown in the South and West.
All of them are cereals and all can be used interchangeably with wheat
in our diet.
To understand clearly the value of cereals in the diet to-day, it is
well to review the part played by food in general. Europe to-day is
eating to live. She therefore thinks of food not in terms of menus
but as a means of keeping up bodily functions, as sources of protein,
carbohydrate and fat--terms seldom heard outside of the university a
few years ago.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD
We need food first of all to burn as fuel for all the activities of
the body, just as any other machine needs fuel. The fuel value of
food, or its energy, is measured in _calories_. A calorie measures the
amount of heat or energy given off when anything burns, whether it is
coal in a stove or food in the body.
Practically all foods give this fuel or energy, but some give much
more than others. Fats give more fuel than an equal weight of any
other food. Sugar and foods rich in starch like flour and corn meal
are fuel foods. This is one of the reasons why they are chosen to be
shipped abroad. The cereals always supply an important part of the
fuel of the diet. Watery foods, like many vegetables and fruits,
normally give less fuel. A person could not live on lettuce any better
than a house could be heated with tissue paper.
If the food does not supply enough energy, a person will burn up
part of his own body for fuel and will grow emaciated. Far too often
we find children of the very poor who are undernourished because of
lack of food fuel. Sometimes even well-to-do young people half starve
themselves because they get "notions" about food. One of the terrible
tragedies abroad is the hundreds and thousands of men and women and
children who are worn and thin and sick for lack of food.
We need food, too, to keep the organs of the body running smoothly.
Abroad, people are suffering not only because they have not enough
food, but because they have not the right kinds of food. Milk and
vegetables and fruits are especially useful. They are the chief
sources of the much-needed _mineral salts_ and the two _vitamines_.
The vitamines are substances of great importance about which has
centred much discussion lately and which scientists do not yet fully
understand, though they realize that they are essential for the growth
of children and for health in adults.
The _protein_ of food is used to build the body if we are young, and
to restore the daily wear and tear if we are older. The mineral salts
are also necessary for this purpose. Protein will be discussed further
in the chapter on meat and meat substitutes, but it should be realized
here that the protein we eat comes not only from these foods, but also
from the cereals. Cereals supply a full half of the protein of many
diets.
Cereals are therefore important for their fuel since they are rich in
starch, and for their protein, and, if we eat the entire kernel, for
their mineral matter and vitamines. They also have the pleasant flavor
and texture which we have grown to like.
Wheat is no better than any of the other cereals. It possesses
absolutely no nutritional advantage for man or beast over oats, corn,
and rye. It has no more protein, and no better protein. It has no more
fat and no better fat. It has no better mineral salts and in no larger
amounts. It has no more fuel or better fuel. It is just _one_ of the
cereals, and there is not the slightest evidence that it is the best
one. It has merely become one of our habits.
Corn and wheat and the other cereals are just as well digested if
equally well prepared. A soggy piece of wheat bread may, of course,
be less readily digestible than a well-made piece of corn-bread, but
that is a question of skill in cooking, not of difference in cereals.
Complaints have been heard in England about the war bread. It is true
that it may be hard on those of frail digestive powers to change their
food habits in any way, but Hutchison, an eminent London physician, in
tracing down complaints, found that frequently people laid to the new
bread ailments from which they had suffered before the war. "When in
doubt, blame the war bread," seemed to be the motto.
THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF CEREALS, ESPECIALLY WHEAT
The world eats more cereals than any other kind of food. They are
so widely available, so cheap and nutritious, that they are a main
reliance of the human race. A shortage is always extremely serious.
Not only is an abundance important, but an abundance of the accustomed
kind. In parts of India, the inhabitants use rice as almost the only
cereal. When the rice-crop failed some years ago, thousands of people
died of starvation with a supply of wheat available. They did not know
the use of wheat as food.
Countries like France, which use their cereals chiefly for bread, are
the most dependent on wheat, since wheat is the most easily made into
bread.
In the United States cereals make up almost one-third of our food.
Although wheat in most parts of the country has been the main
dependence, we have used a much greater variety of cereals than most
people, so that it is comparatively simple for the majority to make
increased use of them.
The very poor must depend largely upon cereals because they can get
more for their money from them than from other foods. Cereals, to most
of them, mean bread. It is such a large part of their diet that doing
without it means a far more fundamental and difficult change in their
food habits than for the well-to-do with greater freedom of choice.
Besides, the already overburdened working woman must get her bread in
the easiest possible way--a ready-made loaf from the baker. The burden
of scarcity or high prices falls on those least able to bear it.
Europeans eat even larger amounts of wheat than we. Over half the
food of the French is bread, so if the wheat shortage were near the
danger-line, it might lead to a serious weakening of the marvellous
courage of the French people.
WHEAT FLOUR IN WAR-TIME
To use this country's share of the short supply of wheat to the
greatest advantage the Food Administration has changed the making
of flour to include more of the wheat-kernel. The difference between
peace and war time flour is easily understood if the structure of
grains is considered. Wheat and other cereals have kernels much alike;
all have three principal parts:
The outer covering, called _bran_, is made up of several layers. This
is rich in important mineral salts, and the rest is largely cellulose,
or woody fibre.
The _germ_ is the small part from which the new plant will develop.
Here the small amount of fat in the kernel is stored.
The largest part of the kernel, called the _endosperm_, contains the
nourishment to be used by the plant as it begins to develop. This is
mostly starch, with some protein. It is the part of the wheat, for
instance, which is chiefly used to make our white flour.
The kind of flour made depends on how much and what parts of the
kernel are used. Graham flour is manufactured by grinding practically
all of the wheat-kernel--a 100-per-cent use of the grain, called
100-per-cent extraction. Some people still fail to realize that Graham
flour and Graham bread are wheat, perhaps because of the different
name and brown color. The so-called "whole-wheat" flour is often 95
per cent of the kernel only, but may be as little as 85 per cent,
depending on the amount of the bran and germ removed in the making.
Ordinary white flour contains the endosperm alone, with practically
none of the bran and germ. Some brands before the war used up as
little as 56 per cent of the wheat, leaving the rest of it to be
turned into lower-grade flours and cattle-feed. White flour thus uses
less of the wheat for human food than Graham or whole-wheat flour.
Yet to convert all the country's wheat into Graham flour would not be
a wheat-saving measure, because it is not so well suited to our trade
conditions. Graham flour, for one thing, does not keep so well as
flour of lower extractions, as the fat in the germ may become rancid
in a comparatively short time. Flour in this country is often thirty
days or longer in transit and may be months in warehouses, stores, and
homes. A flour to be satisfactory under extreme conditions here or
for shipment abroad must keep at least six months--too long to be sure
that Graham flour will keep. In small countries like England, where
flour is used up more promptly, a high extraction is more practicable
than in the United States.
Moreover, while Graham and whole-wheat flours with their larger
quantities of mineral salts are a more desirable food for some people
than white flour, they are occasionally irritating to people with weak
digestions, so that it would be unfortunate to have only these flours
on the market.
The Food Administration, therefore, has considered that the most
effective use of our wheat could be obtained by forbidding the
manufacture of fancy flours of low extraction and making all flour
contain at least 74 per cent of the wheat. This still gives a fine
white flour that keeps well and is difficult to distinguish from that
on the market before the war.
To help in the enforcement of its flour rulings, the Food
Administration has licensed all mills and elevators which handle over
100 barrels of flour a day. If the rulings of the Food Administration
are not obeyed the license may be taken away, and the business
closed. The hoarding of flour has been stopped by prohibiting mills,
elevators, and bakers from having more than 30 days' supply on hand.
THE 50-50 RULE. ANOTHER WAY TO CUT THE CONSUMPTION OF WHEAT
NOT ONLY MUST THE MILLER MANUFACTURE FLOUR IN ACCORDANCE WITH
NEW REGULATIONS, BUT THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER MUST BUY IT UNDER
RESTRICTIONS. To many people the first realization that war and food
difficulties are necessarily associated, came with the announcement
in the spring of 1918 of the now familiar rules for the purchase of
flour. With every pound of white wheat flour, the purchaser must
buy a pound of some other cereal; with every pound of Graham flour,
three-fifths of a pound of other cereal.
The purpose of this regulation is, of course, to lessen the use of
wheat by increasing the use of the substitutes. The housekeeper who
through lack of initiative or ingenuity fails to feed the family the
substitutes and lets them accumulate on her shelf has just so far
failed to co-operate with the Food Administration. Many a housewife
has learned the value of these cereals and will continue to use
them long after the war and the Food Administration have passed into
history.
A little thought will show the absence of any real burden in the 50-50
rule. A housekeeper for her family of four buys five pounds of wheat
flour and five pounds of other cereals. She may use 1¼ pounds of the
substitutes with the 5 pounds of wheat flour to make about 8 pounds of
Victory bread--sufficient to give each member of her family 2 pounds
of bread during the week. She may serve an ounce of oatmeal as the
breakfast cereal and an ounce of rice, hominy, or other cereal for
each person daily and will then have used all the substitutes. These
cereals can be made into an endless variety of quick breads, cakes,
and pastry, or combined with other foods as the main dish of the meal.
SUBSTITUTES FOR WHEAT FLOUR
The cereals on the market are varied enough to suit any taste.
REMEMBER THAT AS FAR AS NUTRITIONAL VALUE IS CONCERNED, IT MAKES
PRACTICALLY NO DIFFERENCE WHETHER WE EAT WHEAT OR OATS, RYE OR
BARLEY. The quantities of starch, protein, mineral matter, and fat
are so nearly the same that any one of them can take the place of
another. Oatmeal has a slight advantage over wheat both in protein
and fat, and since oats is an abundant crop in our country it is an
excellent substitute. Rice has a very little more starch and less
protein than the others.
There is just one advantage that wheat flour has over the other
cereals--it can be made into lighter and more durable bread. The
reason for this is given in the next chapter.
_Corn, the most abundant substitute._ Indian corn is native to the
United States. Since it carried the Pilgrims through their year
of famine, it has always been considered our national grain. Other
countries have adopted it to some extent, but more than three
quarters of the world's corn is grown here. In 1917 our corn crop was
3,000,000,000 bushels, four times as large as our wheat crop. Most
of the crop has always been used as a feed-grain, with only a small
percentage for human food. The South has always used much more corn
than the North, actually eating more corn than wheat.
The foods from corn and the ways of using them are more numerous than
is often appreciated. Corn meal and corn flour are the most important.
We are making almost as much corn meal as wheat flour. The yellow and
white corn meals, milled from different kinds of corn, are practically
the same in composition, though slightly different in flavor. The
method of milling corn meal makes more difference in the composition
than the kind of corn used. The old "water-ground" meal was simply
crushed between millstones and only the coarsest particles of bran
bolted out. This ranks with Graham as a product of 100 per cent
extraction and like Graham, it may not keep well, because the germ
is left in. The new process, more like modern flour-milling, removes
some of the bran and germ. The product is a granulated corn meal which
keeps better than the other, and has practically the same composition,
though to some people a less desirable flavor.
If corn meal is further ground and bolted, we have corn flour. Some
of this has been put on the market lately and is proving a good
substitute for wheat flour; but the amount available is only a small
fraction of the amount of corn meal. Other important corn products
are hominy of different kinds, hulled corn, and popcorn. The latter,
usually eaten as an "extra," is really a valuable part of the diet.
Corn is the same satisfactory food whether it is eaten as mush in
New England, _polenta_ in Italy, or _tamales_ in Mexico. Many of
the people of Mexico and Central America live on corn and beans to
a surprising extent. In portions of Italy the rural population have
adopted the grain as their main food. Our corn-meal mush is their
_polenta_, which is served sometimes with cheese, sometimes with
tomato sauce or meat gravy.
_Oats_. An Englishman once taunted a Scotchman with the fact that
while England used oats only for her horses, Scotland fed it to her
men. "Ah!" said Sandy; "but where will you find such horses as you
raise in England and such men as in Scotland!"
The United States, more like England than Scotland, has used oats
mostly for feed. The crop is second only to the corn-crop. Oats are
eaten in the form of oatmeal, which is a finely granulated meal, and
as the common rolled oats which have been steamed and put through
rollers. There is little oat flour on the market at present. A
successful and palatable home-made flour may be prepared by putting
rolled oats through a food-chopper. Any of the forms of oats can be
used in breads of all kinds, but the more finely ground flour can
be substituted in larger proportion. The demand for oat products has
grown so rapidly the last year that mills are running to their limit.
Special machinery is required for its manufacture, so that a great
increase in the supply is not feasible in a short time.
_Barley and Rye_. In using barley and rye for bread we are only going
back to the methods of our forefathers. Barley is supposed to be
one of the first cereals used by man. Good barley flour is a very
acceptable substitute for wheat, but if too large a proportion of the
kernel is included, it may be bitter in flavor.
_Rye_, of all the cereals, makes bread nearest like wheat, though the
rye bread formerly made usually contained from 20 per cent to 80 per
cent wheat flour. The supply is far below what we could well use. For
this reason it is not included among the cereals which the housekeeper
is allowed to buy on the 50-50 plan, and since March 31, 1918, bakers
have not been allowed to use it as a substitute in baking on the same
basis as the other substitutes.
_Rice_. Rice forms the chief food of hundreds of millions of people,
and in many oriental countries is the staple cereal, like wheat with
us. As a wheat substitute we may use it cooked whole or ground into
a flour. The rice flour may be mixed with other cereals in making
bread and cakes. The rice polish, which is a by-product secured by
rubbing off with brushes the outside coating of the brown rice, is
much cheaper. It has been sold chiefly for stock-feed, but it has
possibilities as a flour substitute.
The rice-growers of the South are doing their best to supply the
country with rice in quantity and to make known the possibilities
of this cereal. The rice flour supply, though not large now, will
doubtless be much increased by next year. One Louisiana mill, for
example, is increasing its output from 150 to 1,200 barrels a day.
_Other Cereal Substitutes_. Besides the substitutes which are common
all over the country, there are products produced in too small amounts
to make them universal substitutes, such as buckwheat, cottonseed
meal, and peanut flour, any of which can be used with other flours for
baking. The Southwest produces both flour and meal from milo, kaffir,
and feterita.
Flours are made from the Irish and sweet potato, from tapioca, from
soy beans, and bananas, but they are manufactured in such small
amounts that they do not take the place of wheat to any great extent.
Potato flour comes nearest to doing this. It has always been used
to some extent in Europe and it is being widely used in Germany now.
Potato itself can be used instead of wheat. An extra potato at a meal
will take the place of a large slice of bread.
Many of the substitute cereals do not keep so well as wheat,
especially if they contain more than a minimum of moisture and fat.
The housekeeper and the baker should therefore buy them in small
enough quantities to use them up promptly and should keep them in a
cool, well-ventilated place. May and June and the summer months are
the time when most care is needed.
It is the free use of these many wholesome substitutes that is making
possible the necessary saving of wheat. We who appreciate their
wholesomeness and their value can well break away from our wheat habit
and gladly make the little effort sometimes necessary to begin using
newer foods.