CEREALS WE OUGHT TO EAT
(Reprinted from _The Farmer's Wife_, by permission of the Webb
Publishing Company.)
"Save wheat!" This great slogan of our national food campaign has been
echoed and reëchoed for six months, but do we yet realize that it means
US? We have had, hitherto, a great deal of wheat in our diet. Fully
one-third of our calories have come from wheat flour. To ask us to do
without wheat is to shake the very foundation of our daily living. How
shall we be able to do without it? What shall we substitute for it? These
are questions which every housewife must ask and answer before she can
take her place in the Amazon Army of Food Conservers.
Is it not strange that out of half a dozen different grains cultivated for
human consumption, the demand should concentrate upon wheat? One might
almost say that the progress of civilization is marked by raised bread.
And wheat has, beyond all other grains, the unique properties that make
possible a light, porous yet somewhat tenacious loaf. We like the taste of
it, mild but sweet; the feel of it, soft yet firm; the comfort of it,
almost perfect digestion of every particle. We have been brought up on it
and it is a hardship to change our food habits. It takes courage and
resolution. It takes visions of our soldiers crossing the seas to defend
us from the greedy eye of militarism and thereby deprived of so many
things which we still enjoy. Shall we hold back from them the "staff of
life" which they need so much more than we?
Can we live without wheat? Certainly, and live well. We must recognize the
scientific fact that no one food (with the exception of milk) is
indispensable. There are four letters in the food alphabet: _A_, fuel for
the body machine; _B_, protein for the upkeep of the machinery; _C_,
mineral salts, partly for upkeep and partly for lubrication--to make all
parts work smoothly together; _D_, vitamines, subtle and elusive
substances upon whose presence depends the successful use by the body of
all the others. These four letters, rightly combined, spell health. They
are variously distributed in food materials. Sometimes all are found in
one food (milk for example), sometimes only one (as in sugar), sometimes
two or three. The amounts also vary in the different foods. To build up a
complete diet we have to know how many of these items are present in a
given food and also how much of each is there.
Now, cereals are much alike in what they contribute to the diet. In
comparing them we are apt to emphasize their differences, much as we do in
comparing two men. One man may be a little taller, a little heavier, have
a different tilt to his nose, but any two men are more alike than a man
and a dog. So corn has a little less protein than wheat and considerably
less lime, yet corn and wheat are, nutritionally, more alike than either
is like sugar.
None of the cereals will make a complete diet by itself. If we take white
bread as the foundation, we must add to it something containing lime, such
as milk or cheese; something containing iron, such as spinach, egg yolk,
meat, or other iron-rich food; something containing vitamines, such as
greens or other vitamine-rich food; something to reënforce the proteins,
as milk, eggs, meat, or nuts. It is not possible to make a perfect diet
with only one other kind of food besides white bread. It can be done with
three: bread, milk, and spinach, for example.
If we substitute whole wheat for white bread, we can make a complete diet
with two foods--this and milk. We get from the bran and the germ what in
the other case we got from the spinach. _All the cereals can be
effectively supplemented by milk and green vegetables._ If green
vegetables (or substitutes for them like dried peas and beans or fruit)
are hard to get we should give preference to cereals from which the bran
coats have not been removed, such as oatmeal and whole wheat. Then the
diet will not be deficient in iron, which is not supplied in large enough
amounts from white bread and milk. Oatmeal is the richest in iron of all
the cereals.
With such knowledge, we may alter our diet very greatly without danger of
undernutrition. But we must learn to cook other cereals at least as well
as we do wheat. Without proper cooking they are unpalatable and
unwholesome, and they are not so easy to cook as wheat. They take a longer
time and we cannot get the same culinary effects, since with the exception
of rye they will not make a light loaf. Fortunately we are not asked to
deny ourselves wheat entirely, only to substitute other cereals for part
of it. Let each housewife resolve when next she buys flour to buy at the
same time one-fourth as much of some other grain, finely ground, rye,
corn, barley, according to preference, and mix the two thoroughly at once.
Then she will be sure not to forget to carry out her good intentions.
Bread made of such a mixture will be light and tender, and anything that
cannot be made with it had better be dispensed with in these times.
Besides the saving of wheat for our country's sake, we shall do well to
economize in it for our own. Compared with other cereals, wheat is
expensive. We can get more food, in every sense of the word, from half a
pound of oatmeal than we can from a twelve-ounce loaf of white bread, and
the oatmeal will not cost one-half as much as the bread. A loaf of Boston
brown bread made with one cupful each of cornmeal, oatmeal (finely
ground), rye flour, molasses, and skim milk will have two and one-half
times the food value of a twelve-ounce loaf of white bread and will cost
little more. One-half pound of cornmeal, supplemented by a half pint of
milk, will furnish more of everything needed by the body than such a
twelve-ounce loaf, usually at less cost.
It pays at all times to use cereals in other forms than bread, for both
health and economy. Does your family eat cereal for breakfast? A dish of
oatmeal made from one-fourth cupful of the dry cereal will take the place
of two slices of white bread, each about half an inch thick and three
inches square, and give us iron besides. Served with milk, it will make a
well-balanced meal. When we add a little fruit to give zest and some crisp
corn bread to contrast with the soft mush, we have a meal in which we may
take a just pride, _provided the oatmeal is properly cooked_.
A good dish of oatmeal is as creditable a product as a good loaf of bread.
It cannot be made without taking pains to get the right proportions of
meal, water, and salt, and to cook thoroughly, which means at least four
hours in a double boiler, over night in a fireless cooker, or half an hour
at twenty pounds in a pressure cooker. Half-cooked oatmeal is most
unwholesome, as well as unpalatable. It is part of our patriotic duty not
to give so useful a food a bad reputation.
The man who does hard physical labor, especially in the open air, may
complain that the oatmeal breakfast does not "stay by" him. This is
because it digests rapidly. What he needs is a little fat stirred into the
mush before it is sent to the table, or butter as well as milk and sugar
served with it. If one must economize, the cereal breakfast should always
be the rule. It is impossible in any other way to provide for a family
adequately on a small sum, especially where there are growing children.
Next to oatmeal, hominy is one of the cheapest breakfast foods. It has
less flavor and is improved by the addition of a few dates cut into
quarters or some small stewed seedless raisins, which also add the iron
which hominy lacks. For the adults of the family the staying qualities of
hominy and cornmeal can be increased by cutting the molded mush in slices
and frying till a crisp crust is formed. This can be obtained more easily
if the cereals are cooked in a mixture of milk and water instead of water
alone. The milk supplements the cereal as acceptably as in a dish of mush
and milk. Cornmeal needs even more cooking than oatmeal to develop an
agreeable flavor. It can be improved by the addition of an equal amount of
farina or cream of wheat.
Cereals for dinner are acceptable substitutes for such vegetables as
potatoes, both for economy and for variety. The whole grains, rice,
barley, and hominy, lend themselves best to such use. Try a dish of
creamed salmon with a border of barley; one of hominy surrounded by fried
apples; or a bowl of rice heaped with bananas baked to a turn and removed
from their skins just before serving, and be glad that the war has stirred
you out of food ruts!
Cereals combined with milk make most wholesome puddings, each almost a
well-balanced meal in itself. They are easier to make than pies,
shortcakes, and other desserts which require wheat flour, and they are
splendid growing food for boys and girls.
For the hard-working man who misses the slowly-digesting pie, serve the
puddings with a hard sauce or add a little butter when making them. For
the growing children, raisins, dates, and other fruits are welcome
additions on account of their iron. From half a cupful to a cupful of
almost any cereal pudding made with milk is the equivalent of an ordinary
serving of pie.
Aside from the avoidance of actual waste of food materials, there seems to
be no one service so imperative for housewives to render in these critical
times as the mastery of the art of using cereals. These must be made to
save not only wheat but meat, and for most of us also money.
A wholesome and yet economical diet may be built upon a plan wherein we
find for an average working man fourteen ounces of cereal food and one
pint of milk, from two to four ounces of meat or a good meat substitute,
two ounces of fat, three ounces of sugar or other sweeteners, at least one
kind of fruit, and one kind of vegetable besides potatoes (more if one has
a garden).
The cereal may furnish half the fuel value of the diet, partly
bread-stuffs and partly in some of the other ways as suggested, without
any danger of undernutrition. Remember the fable of the farmer who told
his sons he had left them a fortune and bade them dig on his farm for it
after his death, and how they found wealth not as buried treasure but
through thorough tillage of the soil. So one might leave a message to
woman to look in the cereal pot, for there is a key to health and wealth,
and a weapon to win the greatest war the world has ever seen.