Abstract

Throughout the whole of India the staple article of diet of the masses is a cereal grain of one kind or another-wheat, barley, millet, maize, rice-sometimes a mixture of two or more of them. Most of these grains are enten whole; these are not subjected to any milling or refining process before use. The outer layers of the grain and embryo, containing valuable dietary constituents, are thus con- sumed with endosperm. Rice is the single exception to this rule; though within recent years the use of white flour and white brend is spreading in the larger towns and cities. Rice is always subjected to some form of refining process. In country districts, distant from rice mills it is pounded by the villagers in large mortars; a process which removes some, but not all of the external layers. In towns it is milled and polished in the raw state or after par boiling or curing. As is well known these processes reduce its nutritive value to a greater or n lesser degree. Biological tests in this laboratory have shown that these cereals differ in nutritive value; whole wheat being the most, and whole rice the least, nutri- tious. The other cereals occupy an intermediate position between these two extremes. All are deficient in certain food essentials-suitable proteins, calcium. sodium, iron, phosphorus and certain vitamins. These deficiencies are greatest in whole rice; and as rice is always subjected to refining processes, always washed before cooking, and always consumed after prolonged boiling, this cereal is, generally speaking, of much lower nutritive value than any of the others.

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