Millets and Grain Sorghums The name "millet" (from mille, thousand, referring to the large number of seeds borne by one plant) has been applied to several kinds of food grains, some of which belong to different and not closely related species. Panicum miliaceum (German Hirse) is the common millet of Europe and probably still the most common in this country. It is very widely cultivated in Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and to a less extent in the Americas. While largely used and highly prized as a feed for farm animals and poultry (a Russian peasant expression for contentment is "as happy as a milletfed hen "), millet is also a valuable food for man. It is perhaps most often milled to the form of groats, and large quantities of millet groats are used as human food in Russia cooked with water, or with fat, or combined, in the various ways in which rice is combined, with meats and vegetables. Australian millet, Polish millet, and Guinea grass are other species of the same genus. Less closely related are Egyptian millet or pearl millet (widely cultivated in the near and far East and popular as a breakfast food with Americans there), and Indian millet or durra. McCollum reported millet seed richer in vitamin A than are other seeds. Steenbock, Sell, and Jones, however, find that millets are not uniformly rich in this vitamin; some contain barely enough to give evidence of its presence" while other varieties contain somewhat more than most seeds. These investigators do not consider it warrantable to assume that millets occupy a unique position among the grains with respect to their content of the fat-soluble vitamin. A large variety of grain sorghum, extensively grown in northern China, is sometimes. called Manchurian millet. Its native name is kao-liang. In the region from Peking northward nearly to Harbin one passes through miles of unbroken fields of kao-liang, as of wheat or maize on the American prairies. It grows to a height of 10 to 12 feet, bearing a large cluster of seeds at the top. The grain sorghums are able to thrive with relatively little moisture, and several varieties of them are now being tested in the dry-farming of some of our western states. While not of great economic importance in this country at present (1923), they may easily become so if dry-farming extends. Probably most of the products made from corn (maize) could be made from the seeds of the grain sorghum if future economic conditions should render this profitable. Buckwheat Buckwheat, the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, is not a cereal (since the plant which bears it does not belong to the true grasses), but for practical discussion is usually grouped with the cereal grains. Although more popular as a food in the United States than in most other countries, the amount grown is small as compared with other grains. The buckwheat kernel is about as large as that of wheat or barley and is characterized by its different shape and higher proportion of fiber due to its thick protective covering. The latter is rejected in milling the grain, so that the "fine" buckwheat flour has, like "fine" wheat flour, only a negligible amount of fiber about one half of one per cent. Typical American analyses of buckwheat and buckwheat flour are as follows (Table 43): TABLE 43. COMPOSITION OF BUCKWHEAT AND BUCKWHEAT FLOUR In order to comply with the standard of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, buckwheat flour must contain not more than 12 per cent moisture, not less than 1.28 per cent nitrogen, and not more than 1.75 per cent of ash. Breakfast Cereals The great variety of forms in which the grains are prepared as breakfast foods and the extravagant claims which have sometimes been made by the manufacturers have directed so much attention to these products that it is now generally understood that they resemble closely the staple grain products in composition and nutritive value. For detailed discussion of these products with analyses of the different brands, the reader is referred to the following publications: Atwater. Digestibility of Cereal Breakfast Foods. Storrs (Conn.) Agricultural Experiment Station, 16th Annual Report, pages 180-209 (1904). Harcourt. Breakfast Foods; Their Chemical Composition, Digestibility and Cost. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, Vol. 26, pages 240-243, and Ontario Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 162 (1907). Woods and Snyder. Cereal Breakfast Foods. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 249. See also the general references at the end of the chapter. Composition of Grain and Bakery Products The composition of most of the grains and of several of their mill products have been given in the preceding sections of this chapter. The table which follows contains a compilation of analyses of raw and cooked grain products, taken chiefly from Atwater and Bryant and arranged according to their classification. |