THE NUTRITIVE VALUE OF CEREAL BREAKFAST FOODS I.COMPOSITION AND HEAT VALUE By

THE nutritive value of cereal foods has been extensively studied in the past, but since the publication of Woods and Snyder's bulletin (1906) and Harcourt's paper (1907) there has been no general sur vey of the cereal breakfast foods in common use in comparison with one another and scarcely any study exists where the human subject has been used for comparison of these articles with other staple articles of diet. Meantime many new methods of study have been devised and new concep tions of food values have been acquired. The modern conception of the bio logical value of protein dates from 1909, and the entire, enormous litera ture on the vitamins has accumulated since 1912. Many conclusions re garding the vitamin values and protein values of cereal foods have been established by means of experiments on lower mammals;but there remains a considerable number of questions of nutritive value, both within and without these fields, which can be appropriately studied on the human subject. In the semi-scientific literature on foods and diets there are found not infrequently hints that the "super milling " and other processing, such as the sterilization with heat, steaming in preparation for rolling, crushing, toasting, crisping, and the like, to which our package breakfast foods are subjected, are really devitalizing in their effects and therefore destructive of important nutritive properties Is this a correct picture, or to what extent have the nutritive properties been affected by the modern milling and packing methods? The opportunity to make a comprehensive study of this class of foods, which apparently has become a fixed element in the dietary of the Ameri can people, came in the form of a grant of money to this laboratory by one of the large producing companies a few years ago, the only stipulation on the part of the company being that their own product should be in cluded in all phases of the study, and the stipulation on the part of the laboratory being that the results, insofar as they might be considered of general scientific interest, should be truthfully published. Aside fro