In these the gluten which lies next the bran is preserved—this contains the nitrates that feed muscular tissues and the mineral product that nourishes and sustains the nervous system. For constipation, these foods are the natural remedy and preventive, as they give the ganglionic nerve centers nutriment, and hence enable them to preside over the functions of digestion.
Entire Wheat Flour, Franklin Mill Co., Lockport, N. Y., fulfills these conditions, and is one of the noblest additions to the foods of the world. The grain is denuded of the outside silicious bark and then ground into a fine flour, and all the elements of the grain are preserved.
Wheat, more than any other article of food, furnishes all the elements and in the right proportion required to nourish the body. In bolting the flour to make fine white flour, four-fifths of the gluten, the very most nutritious part of the grain, is taken out to be fed to cows and hogs.
Dr. Ephraim Cutter, of Harvard, in an able illustrated article on “Cereal Foods” in the American Medical Weekly, says: “The gluten of cereal foods is their nitrogenized element, the element on which depends their life-sustaining value, and this element is, in the white and foolishly fashionable flour, almost entirely removed, while the starch, the inferior element, is left behind and constitutes the entire bulk and inferior nutriment of such flours. To use flour from which the gluten (in the bran) has been removed, is almost criminal. That it is foolish and useless needs no further demonstration. In sickness, and in the sickness of infants especially, starch is highly injurious, while gluten is life-giving and restorative.”
In the valuable article from which the above extract is taken, microscopical examination is given of forty-four kinds of flour and health foods. Of the Franklin Mill Co. flour he says: “The field is filled with gluten cells. Repeated examinations prove this to be the best flour examined.” One can readily see, being more nutritious, in point of economy, even, this flour is invaluable. It is preferable for making anything that is ordinarily made from white flour; makes better pie crust, better cake, and griddle-cakes, and for toast, pudding and gems, has no comparison with other flour. Still further, what will with many be considered the best argument for its use, the taste of this flour is sweeter and more “nutty.” Once accustomed to the “Flour of the Entire Wheat,” white flour seems tasteless and insipid, and none will return to its use from choice. Hundreds of cases within my knowledge attest to this fact.
The effect of this food in alleviating and curing constipation is something of which all should know. A family at one time came to live near me in which was a baby boy about sixteen months of age. I was attracted by his pretty ways, but saw that he was far from well, his skin being white and waxy, his flesh puffy. I said to the mother, “Your little boy is not well.”
“Do you think so?” she answered in surprise. “Everybody thinks he looks so well.”
“He certainly is not well with that appearance of his skin. What is the matter?”
“Why, nothing at all, except that he is dreadfully constipated, and has been for months. His bowels do not move oftener than once in two or three days, and then he suffers terribly, screaming and crying piteously. His rectum often protrudes, and blood comes with the passage.”
“Poor little fellow. That will never do. What do you feed him?” “Mostly bread and milk.”