CEREALS WE OUGHT TO EAT

“Save wheat!” This great slogan of our national food campaign has been echoed and reechoed for six months, but do we yet realize that it means us? We have had, hitherto, a great deal of wheat in our diet. Fully one-third of our calories have come from wheat flour. To ask us to do without wheat is to shake the very foundation of our daily living. How shall we be able to do without it? What shall we substitute for it? These are questions which every housewife must ask and answer before she can take her place in the Amazon Army of Food Conservers.

Is it not strange that out of half a dozen different grains cultivated for human consumption, the demand should concentrate upon wheat? One might almost say that the progress of civilization is marked by raised bread. And wheat has, beyond all other grains, the unique properties that make possible a light, porous yet somewhat tenacious loaf. We like the taste of it, mild but sweet; the feel of it, soft yet firm; the comfort of it, almost perfect digestion of every particle. We have been brought up on it and it is a hardship to change our food habits. It takes courage and resolution. It takes visions of our soldiers crossing the seas to defend us from the greedy eye of militarism and thereby deprived of so many things which we still enjoy. Shall we hold back from them the “staff of life” which they need so much more than we?

Can we live without wheat? Certainly, and live well. We must recognize the scientific fact that no one food (with the exception of milk) is indispensable. There are four letters in the food alphabet: A, fuel for the body machine; B, protein for the upkeep of the machinery; C, mineral salts, partly for upkeep and partly for lubrication to make all parts work smoothly together; D, vitamines, subtle and elusive substances upon whose presence depends the successful use by the body of all the others. These four letters, rightly combined, spell health. They are variously distributed in food materials. Sometimes all are found in one food (milk for example), sometimes only one (as in sugar), sometimes two or three. The amounts also vary in the different foods. To build up a complete diet we have to know how many of these items are present in a given food and also how much of each is there.

Now, cereals are much alike in what they contribute to the diet. In comparing them we are apt to emphasize their differences, much as we do in comparing two men. One man may be a little taller, a little heavier, have a different tilt to his nose, but any two men are more alike than a man and a dog. So corn has a little less protein than wheat and considerably less lime, yet corn and wheat are, nutritionally, more alike than either is like sugar.

None of the cereals will make a complete diet by itself. If we take white bread as the foundation, we must add to it something containing lime, such as milk or cheese; something containing iron, such as spinach, egg yolk, meat, or other iron-rich food; something containing vitamines, such as greens or other vitamine-rich food; something to reenforce the proteins, as milk, eggs, meat, or nuts. It is not possible to make a perfect diet with only one other kind of food besides white bread. It can be done with three: bread, milk, and spinach, for example.

If we substitute whole wheat for white bread, we can make a complete diet with two foods this and milk. We get from the bran and the germ what in the other case we got from the spinach. All the cereals can be effectively supplemented by milk and green vegetables. If green vegetables (or substitutes for them like dried peas and beans or fruit) are hard to get we should give preference to cereals from which the bran coats have not been removed, such as oatmeal and whole wheat. Then the diet will not be deficient in iron, which is not supplied in large enough amounts from white bread and milk. Oatmeal is the richest in iron of all the cereals.

With such knowledge, we may alter our diet very greatly without danger of undernutrition. But we must learn to cook other cereals at least as well as we do wheat. Without proper cooking they are unpalatable and unwholesome, and they are not so easy to cook as wheat. They take a longer time and we cannot get the same culinary effects, since with the exception of rye they will not make a light loaf. Fortunately we are not asked to deny ourselves wheat entirely, only to substitute other cereals for part of it. Let each housewife resolve when next she buys flour to buy at the same time one-fourth as much of some other grain, finely ground, rye, corn, barley, according to preference, and mix the two thoroughly at once. Then she will be sure not to forget to carry out her good intentions. Bread made of such a mixture will be light and tender, and anything that cannot be made with it had better be dispensed with in these times.

Besides the saving of wheat for our country’s sake, we shall do well to economize in it for our own. Compared with other cereals, wheat is expensive. We can get more food, in every sense of the word, from half a pound of oatmeal than we can from a twelve-ounce loaf of white bread, and the oatmeal will not cost one-half as much as the bread. A loaf of Boston brown bread made with one cupful each of cornmeal, oatmeal (finely ground), rye flour, molasses, and skim milk will have two and one-half times the food value of a twelve-ounce loaf of white bread and will cost little more. One-half pound of cornmeal, supplemented by a half pint of milk, will furnish more of everything needed by the body than such a twelve-ounce loaf, usually at less cost.

It pays at all times to use cereals in other forms than bread, for both health and economy. Does your family eat cereal for breakfast? A dish of oatmeal made from one-fourth cupful of the dry cereal will take the place of two slices of white bread, each about half an inch thick and three inches square, and give us iron besides. Served with milk, it will make a well-balanced meal. When we add a little fruit to give zest and some crisp corn bread to contrast with the soft mush, we have a meal in which we may take a just pride, provided the oatmeal is properly cooked.

A good dish of oatmeal is as creditable a product as a good loaf of bread. It cannot be made without taking pains to get the right proportions of meal, water, and salt, and to cook thoroughly, which means at least four hours in a double boiler, over night in a fireless cooker, or half an hour at twenty pounds in a pressure cooker. Half-cooked oatmeal is most unwholesome, as well as unpalatable. It is part of our patriotic duty not to give so useful a food a bad reputation.

The man who does hard physical labor, especially in the open air, may complain that the oatmeal breakfast does not “stay by” him. This is because it digests rapidly. What he needs is a little fat stirred into the mush before it is sent to the table, or butter as well as milk and sugar served with it. If one must economize, the cereal breakfast should always be the rule. It is impossible in any other way to provide for a family adequately on a small sum, especially where there are growing children.

Next to oatmeal, hominy is one of the cheapest breakfast foods. It has less flavor and is improved by the addition of a few dates cut into quarters or some small stewed seedless raisins, which also add the iron which hominy lacks. For the adults of the family the staying qualities of hominy and cornmeal can be increased by cutting the molded mush in slices and frying till a crisp crust is formed. This can be obtained more easily if the cereals are cooked in a mixture of milk and water instead of water alone. The milk supplements the cereal as acceptably as in a dish of mush and milk. Cornmeal needs even more cooking than oatmeal to develop an agreeable flavor. It can be improved by the addition of an equal amount of farina or cream of wheat.

Cereals for dinner are acceptable substitutes for such vegetables as potatoes, both for economy and for variety. The whole grains, rice, barley, and hominy, lend themselves best to such use. Try a dish of creamed salmon with a border of barley; one of hominy surrounded by fried apples; or a bowl of rice heaped with bananas baked to a turn and removed from their skins just before serving, and be glad that the war has stirred you out of food ruts!

Cereals combined with milk make most wholesome puddings, each almost a well-balanced meal in itself. They are easier to make than pies, shortcakes, and other desserts which require wheat flour, and they are splendid growing food for boys and girls.

For the hard-working man who misses the slowly-digesting pie, serve the puddings with a hard sauce or add a little butter when making them. For the growing children, raisins, dates, and other fruits are welcome additions on account of their iron. From half a cupful to a cupful of almost any cereal pudding made with milk is the equivalent of an ordinary serving of pie.

Aside from the avoidance of actual waste of food materials, there seems to be no one service so imperative for housewives to render in these critical times as the mastery of the art of using cereals. These must be made to save not only wheat but meat, and for most of us also money.

A wholesome and yet economical diet may be built upon a plan wherein we find for an average working man fourteen ounces of cereal food and one pint of milk, from two to four ounces of meat or a good meat substitute, two ounces of fat, three ounces of sugar or other sweeteners, at least one kind of fruit, and one kind of vegetable besides potatoes (more if one has a garden).

The cereal may furnish half the fuel value of the diet, partly bread-stuffs and partly in some of the other ways as suggested, without any danger of undernutrition. Remember the fable of the farmer who told his sons he had left them a fortune and bade them dig on his farm for it after his death, and how they found wealth not as buried treasure but through thorough tillage of the soil. So one might leave a message to woman to look in the cereal pot, for there is a key to health and wealth, and a weapon to win the greatest war the world has ever seen.