National Academies Press: OpenBook

Cereal Enrichment in Perspective, 1958 (1958)

Chapter: WHOLE WHEAT VS. ENRICHED WHITE FLOUR AND BREAD

« Previous: PROTEINS IN BREAD
Suggested Citation:"WHOLE WHEAT VS. ENRICHED WHITE FLOUR AND BREAD." National Research Council. 1958. Cereal Enrichment in Perspective, 1958. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18506.
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Suggested Citation:"WHOLE WHEAT VS. ENRICHED WHITE FLOUR AND BREAD." National Research Council. 1958. Cereal Enrichment in Perspective, 1958. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18506.
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WHOLE WHEAT VS. ENRICHED WHITE FLOUR AND BREAD A comparison of the nutritive value of whole wheat flour with that of enriched flour is of interest but somewhat academic in relation to the enrichment program. Al- though whole wheat flour is sold side by side with white flour, the American public buys over 90 per cent of the total as white in preference to the brown. The same is true for white and brown bread. Moreover, most of the brown bread is made with white flour with a modest admixture of whole wheat. Actually, 97 per cent of the wheat milled for both family and bakery use goes on the market in the form of white flour. Obviously, improvement of the major prod- uct consumed is of greater importance to public health. A study involving protein and vitamin utilization when various types of bread made from whole wheat, 70 per cent white flour, 85 per cent meal, and 70 per cent white flour enriched were employed was recently reported by Widdowson and Mc- Cance24. Bread supplied 70 to 75 per cent of total calories. The subjects were 100 underfed German children in Wuppertal and 150 in Duisberg, 5 to 15 years of age, living in orphanages. At the outset they weighed 9 per cent less than American children of similar age and were 5 per cent shorter in stature. The children were sep- arated into groups at meal time and each group given a different type of bread. The children had about 80 milliliters of milk and 8 grams of animal protein per day. The children in all groups began to im- prove at an equal rate. Their heights and weights went up faster than those of Amer- ican children of comparable age. Previous undernourishment was responsible for the rapid gains when adequate food was sup- plied. At the end of a year there was still no difference among the groups, but the growth and increase in weight had slowed slightly. No difference had been demon- strated among the nutritional values of the various breads. During the progress of the experiments, chemical analyses were made of the diets for thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinic acid, and iron. These showed that, owing to the large amount of vegetables present in the diet, the children, even those eating the unenriched flour, were getting as much of the B vitamins as they required. This flour, incidental- ly, carried almost 0.5 milligram thiamine per 1,000 calories, i.e. much more than was in American 70 per cent extraction flour. Thus it was clear that no nutritional de- ficiencies would be likely to occur among the different groups. The consumption of 8 to 11 grams of animal protein and the vegetable proteins supplied sufficient sup- plementation to the wheat protein to make it very effective. These experiments show that bread requires only modest supple- mentation with other foods to produce good nutrition. CORN PRODUCTS ENRICHMENT In the southern part of the United States, corn meal and corn grits are staple foods for large segments of the population. In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Caro- lina, and South Carolina, all degerminated corn meal and grits sold are required by law to be enriched to the same levels as flour. In South Carolina and Alabama, the enrichment of both degerminated and whole corn meal is mandatory. Some cus- tom grinding is exempt from this require- ment, but the amount becomes less and less with the passage of time as the small mills give way to larger ones. In other southern states, voluntary enrichment of whole com meal is practiced to varying degrees, depending on the effectiveness of the educational programs of state agencies. 1R. A. McCance and E. M. Widdowson. Studies on the nutritive value of bread and on the effect of variations in the extraction rate of flour on the growth of under-nourished children. Med. Res. Counc. London, Spec. Rept. Ser. No. 287 (1954).

The utilization of the calcium in white bread has been found to be very good1" '*. Most of the calcium in American bread is derived from the added milk used in mak- ing bread, the calcium salts—usually phos- phates and sulphates of dough conditioners —and antimycotics such as calcium pro- pionate. Mollsgaard et oi20, Denmark, car- ried out some extensive experiments on phytates in brown bread. By extending the time of fermentation, the phytates were broken down, thus preventing some of the deleterious effects of whole wheat bread on calcium utilization. MILK IN BREAD Non-fat dry milk has long been an im- portant constituent of bread. It is generally used in amounts of approximately 4 per cent in standardized enriched white bread. In 1950 the Committee on Cereals spon- sored a study to determine the value of various methods in use for evaluating the quality of non-fat dry milk for baking pur- poses. Much of the skim milk powder pro- duced is unsuitable for bakery use and no accepted test of quality from this standpoint exists. In the manufacture of non-fat dry milk, it should be heated at 165° F. for 30 minutes or the equivalent before drying; otherwise it has a strong softening action on doughs which makes them difficult to handle with modern machinery. The Harland-Ashworth Test for unde- natured whey proteins remaining in the non-fat dry milk has been widely used to determine baking quality. In the collabo- rative study conducted by Bradley et al21, twelve laboratories ranked six samples of non-fat dry milk rather consistently on the basis of this test. However, the absolute differences of the results among laboratories precluded its use as a basis for specifica- tions. Subsequently the Harland-Ashworth Test was standardized by workers at the University of Minnesota and rechecked in a collaborative study conducted by the American Dry Milk Institute22. It now appears suitable for specification purposes. PROTEINS IN BREAD Wheat proteins have been extensively studied, but there is very little information on the nutritive value of protein in bread made from 72 per cent extraction flour. The chief source of protein in bread is the wheat protein. Second in importance is the protein of non-fat dry milk solids added in breadmaking, and third, the protein of the yeast used in breadmaking. It has been possible to improve the pro- tein supply of the American people by addi- tions of non-fat dry milk solids to bread. The amounts added generally range from 3 to 5 per cent. This addition supplies a number of important amino acids, such as lysine, valine, and methionine, which with the amino acids supplied by yeast greatly improve the flour proteins. Comparison of the pattern of man's amino acid require- ments according to Rose with the pattern of the amino acid content of average en- riched bread, using tryptophan as unity, reveals that bread protein is only slightly deficient in lysine and even less deficient in methionine to meet man's require- ments23. " C. Hoffman. Reproduction of animals on an exclusive diet of bread. Ind. Eng. Chem. 15: 1225 (1923). u W. Hale. The role of bread in nutrition. Ind. Eng. Chem. 15: 1221 (1923). "H. Mollsgaard, K. Lorenzen, I. G. Hansen, and P. E. Christensen. Biochem J. 40: 589 (1946). 11 W. B. Bradley, C. N. Frey. W. F. Geddes, and R. Jenness. A collaborative study of methods for eval- uating the quality of non-fat milk solids for use in breadmaking. Transactions, American Association of Cereal Chemists 11 (3): 217 (1953). " S. Kuramoto, R. P. Choi, S. T. Coulter, and R. Jenness. Standardization of Harland-Ashworth Test for whey protein nitrogen (in preparation). " F. N. Hepburn, E. W. Lewis, and C. A. Elvehjem. Amino acid content of wheat flour and bread. Cereal Chemistry 24: 312 (1957). 6

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