Next to milk perhaps the commonest of our foodstuffs is bread. As already stated in a discussion on cereals, bread is rich in carbohydrates and contains moderate quantities of proteins (see Appendix). The proteins are rather poor in certain essential amino-acids. The amount of fat-soluble A present is small.

Bread is made from different grains. The most prized is that made from wheat. Next in public estimation comes rye, then barley, then oats, then maize. In so far as their nutritive content is concerned, there is little to choose between the various grains. If wheat is preferred to oats, the reason is not because the one contains more protein or carbohydrate, or because the one contains a protein of better quality; it is because the dough formed with wheat, and the bread ultimately produced from it, are more consistent; the wheat bread holds together better and is less granular than the bread made from oats.

Professor Sherman of Columbia, who has carefully investigated the nutritive values of the different cereals, arrives at the conclusion that no choice can be made among them. All are about equally efficient - or rather deficient; for a deficiency of a number of essential amino-acids in their proteins makes it necessary to supplement a cereal food with other food. An excellent supplementary food for such a purpose is milk.

Much of the cereal eaten in this country and in Europe is eaten in the form of bread. The Orientals prefer theirs in the form of rice and corn, and these are usually boiled. The polished rice, without the surrounding layers that are found in the unpolished variety, has given rise to many cases of beriberi among Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, etc. Had our Oriental friends eaten their polished rice together with other and various foods, beriberi would never have attacked them, for the deficiency in water-soluble B vitamine in polished rice might have been obtained from milk or vegetables.