Here is the "staff of life," without which in some form it is almost impossible, for civilized man, at least, to exist. According to experiments made by the United States Department of Agriculture, bread made from whole-wheat flour contains a little more protein than bread made from ordinary flour. Rye bread contains less protein than wheat bread, and corn bread contains less protein than rye bread. Rye, barley, and oats contain less gluten, or the nitrogenous part of grain, than wheat, and Indian corn has no gluten; therefore wheat is the cheapest food. As to cheapness, high-grade white flour is cheaper than the so-called Graham or whole-wheat flours. Graham flour may give more mineral matter, but is not so digestible, as the bran, etc., in it appears to cover up the particles that otherwise would be digested. One thing these coarse particles may do, they may check constipation of the bowels somewhat by their mechanical action on the coat of the bowels. The superior mechanical condition of the high-grade white flours makes them more thoroughly digestible than the Graham and other coarse flours. All flours are wholesome and nutritious foods, and so are corn meal, oat meal, and such.

As a rule, bread is raised by causing the yeast plant to develop in it. So-called aerated bread is also made by forcing carbonic acid gas into it The latter plan has its merits, but the yeast-raised bread is preferable. To be good and palatable, bread must be light and sweet, and great care must be used in making the dough, raising it, baking it, and keeping it. Heavy bread is bad, dangerous food, and the cause of much misery and suffering, for it is far too common in the household.

Recently the Japanese have been mixing some wheat porridge to be used with the army rice ration, and the soldiers are doing better on it. One object in this change was to check the advance of the disease known as beri-beri, which has been attributed in a measure to too much rice in the diet of Eastern nations, where the trouble is endemic, and is characterized by anaemia, dropsy of the abdomen, difficulty of breathing, pain in and paralysis of the lower limbs. The Japanese have two kinds of wheat bread, "pan," or white, and "kuropan," or brown bread. The soldiers prefer the "pan."

As between white bread and brown bread, all experiments now point to white bread as the most desirable for man. One may enjoy the taste of brown bread more, and it may have some mechanical effect in moving the bowels. These are about all of its advantages over white bread.

There is quite a rage now, especially among those who are trying to reduce their fat, for twice-baked bread, toasted bread, and over-toasted bread. This twice-baked bread approaches very near to the well-known German Zwieback, and is quite palatable and nutritious, and, if eaten in moderate quantity, one may appease the appetite for bread and find it much less fattening than ordinary bread, and very much less likely to cause fermentation during digestion. To prepare this twice-baked bread, cut thin slices from a loaf baked at least twenty-four hours before, place them in a pan, and subject them to the heat of a quick, hot oven for from twenty to thirty minutes.

In making toast, what happens? The toasting destroys all yeast germs and other germs which may be in the bread, and thus the toast is sterile; surely a great advantage. The starch in the bread must, of course, be converted into sugar before it can be assimilated. The toasting does this in part. Carry the toasting still further, and we convert the starch into dextrin, a gummy substance. Carry it still further, we get the dark brown and even black toast, the sugar being caramelized and the flavor improved. Steam the toast and you further dex-trinize the starch. Butter it lightly, and you make it more digestible by diffusing it, as it were, and the saliva acts better on it in first starting starchy digestion, which is continued after swallowing by the amylopsin in the pancreatic juice and diastase in the intestinal juices, with some other digestive substances. After all, the reason that toast is more digestible than untoasted bread is due much to the mechanical condition of the toast. In masticating, it does not pack, as bread will do.

Here is another digestible bread: Take light dough, roll it very thin, cut it into strips, roll it into hollow cylinders, and bake it very quick and dry. These cylinders are very digestible, much like toast.

Bread twenty-four hours old is probably most digestible. Before that it packs in mastication, and when older it loses its palatability by the loss of water, etc.

Crackers are not, as a rule, very digestible, because they are baked as very dry dough, not much water being added, and thus the starch granules are not well broken up and the cracker is more difficult to digest. To be digestible, all starches must be well cooked, with sufficient water to soften the granules and break up the cell structure.

Pretzels are superior to crackers as an article of diet, because the dough is here first boiled well, which breaks up the starch, and then thoroughly baked. There is generally too much salt about them, for the carrying of which, it is said, they were invented, to make the lounger drink two glasses of beer when otherwise one would have sufficed. This doubtless is a libel on Boniface.

As to hot bread at meals, the custom is all wrong; it is a breeder of all forms of dyspepsia and other horrors.

As a rule, the American breakfast is too heavy; the English breakfast, with its hot muffins, bacon and eggs, and jam, is no better. The breakfasts of Eastern Europe are too strong, especially in nitrogen. The model breakfast is the French, with its roll and cafe au lait. Even the dejeuner a la fourchette is an artistic meal and usually within the bounds of moderation.