Breakfast Foods
The claims made for various advertised breakfast foods would be amusing if they were not intended to mislead. Nearly all of them have sufficient merit to sell them, if the advertiser confines himself strictly to the truth, but the ever pertinent desire to excel, which is one great incentive to progress, leads to exaggeration. For example: Claim is sometimes made that they contain more nutriment than the same quantity of beef. Reference to above table does not bear out such statement; they contain more starch but less protein. It is also claimed by some advertisers that breakfast foods are brain and nerve foods. The idea that certain foods are brain and nerve foods is erroneous, excepting that any tissue building food (protein) builds nerve and brain tissue as it builds any other tissue. There is a prevalent idea that fish and celery are brain food, but there is no scientific basis for the theory.
The grains commonly used for breakfast foods are corn, oats, rice, and wheat. Barley, and wild rice, millet and buckwheat are used in some sections but not enough to warrant discussion here. Barley is used chiefly for making malt and pearled barley for soups.
The following table, from one of the bulletins published by the United States Department of Agriculture, is interesting from an economical standpoint.
Table VI.
Comparative cost of digestible nutrients and available energy in different cereal breakfast foods.
| Amount for 10 cents | |||||||||
| Food Materials | Price per pound | Cost of one pound of protein | Cost of 1,000 calories of energy | Total wgt. of material | Protein | Fat | Carbohydrates | Energy | |
| Oat preparations: | |||||||||
| Oatmeal, raw | 3 | 0.24 | 1.7 | 3.33 | 0.42 | 0.22 | 2.18 | 5,884 | |
| Do | 4 | .32 | 2.3 | 2.50 | .31 | .16 | 1.64 | 4,418 | |
| Rolled oats, steam cooked | 6 | .48 | 3.4 | 1.67 | .21 | .11 | 1.08 | 2,938 | |
| Wheat preparations: | |||||||||
| Flour, Graham | 4 | .40 | 2.6 | 2.50 | .25 | .01 | 1.61 | 3,790 | |
| Flour, entire-wheat | 5 | .46 | 3.1 | 2.00 | .22 | .03 | 1.36 | 3,188 | |
| Flour, patent | 3.5 | .35 | 2.1 | 2.86 | .29 | .03 | 2.10 | 4,700 | |
| Farina | 10 | 1.12 | 6.2 | 1.00 | .09 | .01 | .73 | 1,609 | |
| Flaked | 15 | 1.69 | 9.3 | .67 | .06 | .01 | .46 | 1,005 | |
| Shredded | 12.5 | 1.62 | 8.2 | .80 | .06 | .01 | .57 | 1,217 | |
| Parched and ground | 7.5 | .88 | 4.9 | 1.33 | .11 | .02 | .94 | 2,050 | |
| Malted, cooked and crushed | 13 | 1.43 | 8.5 | .77 | .07 | .01 | .53 | 1,175 | |
| Flaked and malted | 11 | 1.21 | 7.2 | .91 | .08 | .01 | .62 | 1,389 | |
| Barley preparations | |||||||||
| Pearled barley | 7 | 1.06 | 4.6 | 1.43 | .09 | .01 | 1.04 | 2,165 | |
| Flaked, steam cooked | 15 | 1.83 | 9.6 | .67 | .05 | .50 | 1,051 | ||
| Corn preparations: | |||||||||
| Corn meal, granular | 3 | .44 | 1.8 | 3.33 | .23 | .06 | 2.48 | 5,534 | |
| Hominy | 4 | .62 | 2.4 | 2.50 | .16 | .01 | 1.97 | 4,178 | |
| Samp | 5 | .78 | 3.0 | 2.00 | .13 | .01 | 1.57 | 3,342 | |
| Flaked and parched | 13 | 1.73 | 7.5 | .77 | .06 | .01 | .60 | 1,335 | |
| Rice preparations: | |||||||||
| Rice, polished | 8 | 1.48 | 4.7 | 1.25 | .07 | .94 | 1,855 | ||
| Flaked, steam cooked | 15 | 2.31 | 9.8 | .67 | .04 | .51 | 1,026 | ||
| Miscellaneous foods for comparison: | |||||||||
| Bread, white | 6 | .74 | 5.0 | 1.67 | .14 | .02 | .87 | 2,009 | |
| Do | 5 | .62 | 4.2 | 2.00 | .16 | .02 | 1.04 | 2,406 | |
| Crackers | 10 | 1.10 | 5.3 | 1.00 | .09 | .08 | .71 | 1,905 | |
| Macaroni | 12.5 | 1.08 | 7.5 | .80 | .09 | .01 | .58 | 1,328 | |
| Beans, dried | 5 | .28 | 3.5 | 2.00 | .35 | .03 | 1.16 | 2,868 | |
| Peas, dried | 5 | .26 | 3.4 | 2.00 | .38 | .02 | 1.20 | 2,974 | |
| Milk | 3 | .94 | 9.7 | 3.33 | .11 | .13 | .17 | 1,030 | |
| Do | 3.5 | 1.09 | 11.3 | 2.86 | .09 | .11 | .14 | 885 | |
| Sugar | 5 | 2.8 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3,515 | ||||
| Do | 6 | 3.4 | 1.67 | 1.67 | 2,940 | ||||
The less expensive breakfast foods, such as oatmeal and cornmeal, are as economical as flour, and, as they supply heat and energy in abundance, as shown by above table, they should be supplied in the diet in proportion to the energy required. They are easily prepared for porridge, requiring simply to be boiled in water, with a little salt.
For invalids, children and old people, breakfast foods prepared in gruels and porridges are valuable as they are easily digested. All should be thoroughly cooked so as to break the cells enclosing the starch granules.