Vitamin values of different types of flour.

Trials on animals and human subjects have shown that the proteins as contained in wholemeal are less well utilized than those in white flour. Macrae and his 5 volunteers (Macrae, Hutchinson, Irwin, Bacon and McDougal, 1942) found the average coefficients of apparent digestibility of the nitrogen in bread made from flours of 100 per cent. and 73 per cent. extraction to be, respectively, 85.5 and 91. In the case of the rats, whose performance is summarized in Table 2, the respective average coeficients were 82.4 and 87.3. This loss of about 6 per cent. in digestibility was, however, more than compensated by the greater nutritive value of the proteins of the wholemeal flour.