CHAPTER VI
BREAD AND ITS RELATIONS
At all times, and among all peoples, bread has been recognized as one of the great staple articles of diet. Although its commonly quoted designation, “the staff of life,” would more appropriately belong to the albumins, there can be no question that breads of one kind or another are among the most wholesome and necessary of all food-substances. Not alone is this true on account of the starch of which they are largely composed, but they contain more or less vegetable albumin; it is thus seen that bread is a mixture of the two most important food-stuffs, starch and albumin, but the quantity of the latter is so small that an individual would have to eat an enormous amount of the mixture to secure enough of this ingredient to meet the needs of the body. For practical purposes, then, we may regard bread as being starch.
Within recent years quacks have disseminated very widely throughout this country the error that foods are more digestible when raw. It was long ago demonstrated that pure albumins, of which eggs and milk are the nearest natural examples among foods, are assimilated somewhat better when eaten raw, but this applies to no other foods except sugars. Any success that has followed the teachings just referred to undoubtedly rests purely on the fact that their followers are instructed to live largely on raw eggs and milk, and as the patient usually discovers in a short time that these two foods agree with him while other uncooked ones do not, he naturally eats them to the exclusion of the rest and where he takes a sufficient quantity increases in weight and strength.
The idea that starches are more digestible when eaten raw could be easily refuted by any intelligent farm-boy who recalls one or more sad experiences from over-indulgence in raw sweet potatoes.
What shall we look upon as bread? Of course all such food-stuffs as are commonly included within this designation are to be accepted; such as wheat-bread, graham-bread, whole-wheat bread, biscuits, rolls, light bread, bakers' bread, waffles and batter-cakes, rye bread, corn bread, preparations of corn-starch, with which we should place those articles of diet so commonly used in the south, usually called grits, hominy, egg-bread, muffins, corn-meal cakes, potatoes, both sweet and Irish, arrowroot and the so-called cereals or breakfast-foods, including oatmeal.
Now which of these is the most wholesome? This inquiry cannot be answered conclusively for the reason that the digestibility of this, as of other foods, depends largely on the individual. For the sake of clearness the various breads will now be considered in detail.
Wheat-bread the Best.—It may be confidently asserted that well-cooked and perfectly dry wheat-breads are to be regarded as being generally the most digestible of all bread-stuffs. This is not dependent on any inherent property in wheaten starch as a result of which it is acted upon more readily by the juices whose office it is to render it fit for absorption in the body, but is wholly due to the fact that breads of wheat-flour may be made very dry and light.