or nail. It may make fat, if you have enough of other food to keep up your body long enough for the fat to be stored. But you will never get anything out of it but heat and energy and fat. Starch is an excellent food for a man at hard labor, a man who goes out and cuts logs in the winter or a man who breaks stone in the street, a man who follows the plow, or does any other hard labor can eat a lot of starch and sugar, and use it up in heat and energy, but the man who does not have hard labor, the man who is sedentary or sits at a desk in the office, eats starch and sugar to a great extent at his peril. The life insurance companies have statistics-and they are the best handlers of statistics that I know of, and it is not much comfort to me, this knowledge which they have given me. They have told me that if I weigh 40 pounds above what I should weigh, being 6 feet high, that I will die five years before I otherwise would. And I am 40 pounds overweight. I ought to weigh 200, and I weigh 240. So five years of my life are taken away by eating too much starch and sugar before I learned it was not good for me. I am not getting any stouter now; I am getting a little thinner. But, as I say, to unbalance the people's diet threatens the vitality of the Nation. People must have their proteins. They have to have a certain amount of mineral substance, a certain amount of phosphoric acid and lime. And of all people the children are the ones that in the first instance must be protected against the danger I speak of, and unless we give the children of this country the nourishment which adulterated flour will not give, we will not achieve a manhood worthy of the country. Now, I appeal to you on these two great points. I do not want to elaborate it any further. I would only make my argument weaker by trying to bolster it up with further illustrations. All I say is do not take a step which will mean adulteration of one of your principal foods; do not take a step which will threaten the life of the people of this country. Mr. HILL. Do you believe the German nation to-day is any worse off because of the executive order to mix wheat and potato flour? Dr. WILEY. Yes; they are not as well nourished as if they had wheat flour alone; but they are a great deal better off than if they had corn flour. Mr. HILL. Do you know the proportion that is used? Dr. WILEY. No. Mr. HILL. I understand nobody is allowed to use the pure wheat flour in Germany to-day. Dr. WILEY. I so understand. Mr. HILL. Neither the Kaiser nor anybody else. Dr. WILEY. It is not because the wheat flour is not good. Mr. FORDNEY. It is because they can not get it. Dr. WILEY. Yes; because they can not get it. Mr. HILL. Do you think they have made the best adulteration they could? Dr. WILEY. The best substitute they could in the way of starch. Potatoes are much more wholesome than cornstarch. Mr. HILL. Is it not true that they made the adulteration with that of which they had the most? Dr. WILEY. They had the potatoes; yes. Potatoes are a good article of food for a soldier. He is in active life all the time, and potatoes are an excellent article of food for him. Mr. MOORE. Would you kindly explain the difference in the nutritive qualities of 12-ounce loaves of bread, one made of mixed flour and one of pure wheat flour. Dr. WILEY. I would be glad to do so. The proteins in cereals are not alike. There is no gluten at all, so far as I know, in Indian corn. Proteins, when they are used for food, make different kinds of material which are used for the nutrition of the body. The protein of Indian corn is zein; that is the principal protein of Indian corn. Zein alone will not cause growth. If you take the zein out of the Indian corn and feed it to young animals, the young animals will stop growing at once. If you take the protein out of wheat and feed it to a young animal he will continue to grow. Zein is not a growth promoter. It furnishes material for the grown individual but does not furnish material for the child. Therefore the protein in wheat is a better article of nutrition by far than the protein of Indian corn. If you want it in corn, use milk with it. Then you supply the missing protein which the Indian corn does not have. Wheat will support you without milk. I do not mean by that that wheat alone is a proper food, but you can live a long time on wheat alone and drink no milk; and a child would grow on wheat alone, not as well as he ought to, but he would grow without milk; but he would not grow on Indian corn without milk or some other food which contains the building stone which is necessary. Now, zein does not furnish that necessary ingredient to promote growth. Indian corn does not furnish the building stones necessary in the nourishment of a growing child, but it does furnish material for repairing waste in grown-up persons, and therefore it is valuable for the hard-working man. It is a valuable food for children with milk. That makes a balanced ration. If you put the corn flour, as such, with the gluten in the wheat you diminish its nutritive value. If you put starch in, you take away just that much nutritive power for building tissue, and you put in simply materials that make heat and energy; that is, things you do not need except when you are at work. Hence the mixture of either corn flour or corn starch with wheat flour deteriorates the strength and value of the food. Mr. LONGWORTH. There has been some evidence here that corn has as much, or practically as much, gluten in it as wheat. Dr. WILEY. It has none in it at all. Mr. LONGWORTH. We are furnished by the Corn Products Co.whatever it is called-with a list of comparisons of the amounts of gluten contained in pure flour made of winter wheat, "A," and in flour made of 80 per cent wheat and 20 per cent corn, and the amount of gluten is said to be the same in each case. Dr. WILEY. You could take an extraordinarily rich wheat flour, one containing 13 per cent of protein, and mix a 20 per cent cornstarch flour with it, and the amount of protein would be the same as in a wheat with 10 or 11 per cent of material; but you would have an unbalanced ration there by introducing the starch. Now, I imagine that the Corn Products Co. use the word "protein" as a synonym of gluten. I think so. Mr. MOORE. Do you think the passage of this repealer would have any effect upon the progress that has thus far been made in harmonizing the pure-food laws of the States with those of the Nation? 25718-16- -24 Dr. WILEY. Many of the pure-food provisions of the United States laws have been adopted by the States. Others of the States have adopted the regulations for carrying out the national pure-food law. The repeal of any of them would affect all the States which have adopted the definitions of the national law, and thus it would tend to produce in a State the same condition within the State which this makes in interstate commerce. Mr. MOORE. May I have permission to insert a letter which I have here, Mr. Chairman? Mr. CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it may go in the record. Hon. J. HAMPTON MOORE, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. MIXED-FLOUR HEARING. SIR: We send herewith copy of "Digest of National and State Food Laws," referred to in Mr. Rockwood's argument before your committee Tuesday morning, February 1. The substantive provisions of the national law are quoted in full in black type on pages 5, 8, and 11. The national statute has been taken as a standard and the book indicates in what respects, if any, the various State statutes differ from the standard. You may readily see what marvelous progress has been made in securing uniformity between the national and the 48 State food laws, which is so essential to the production and distribution of interstate commodities at reasonable cost to the consumer. If the State laws are conflicting, different labels must be made for each State having a conflicting law, and the composition of the product is likewise affected. The enactment of House bill 9409 in its present form, i. e., containing special provisions relating to a particular food product, will disrupt the existing uniformity between the national food law and practically all the 48 State food laws. The theory of the food and drugs act of June 30, 1906, is to prohibit by adequate general rules all adulteration and misbranding, and leaves to scientific administration officials the duty of prescribing standards for the numberless food products. Under that statute any food product whatever which is labeled in such a manner as to be false or misleading in any particular is condemned. Under its broad provisions mixed flour, mixed sirup, or any other mixed commodity would be misbranded if the label failed to indicate what the contents actually consisted of. While it is true that the national statute does not require a statement of percentages, it is submitted that such a requirement would work injustice to a merchant who had invented a meritorious product by compelling him to disclose his trade formula to his competitors. While such a requirement would work injustice on the one hand, it would have no compensating benefit to the consumer. As a practical matter the average consumer when purchasing would pay no more attention to percentages stated than to the color of the label. We therefore respectfully recommend that H. R. 9409 be confined to the repeal of the mixed-flour statute and that all other provisions amending the food law be eliminated from the bill. If this be done, it is our opinion that the consumer would be fully protected under the United States food and drugs act of June 30, 1906, in its present form. Respectfully, BREED, ABBOTT & MORGAN. Mr. SLOAN. Will you explain the difference between protein and gluten because there is evidence here that corn is fairly charged with gluten? Dr. WILEY. Of course, that is only due to the fact of the wrong use of terms. I should like to explain to the committee the true use of the name. There is no gluten in wheat, even. There are, however, two elements in wheat, one of which is called glutinin and the other gliadin. When they are wet they unit to form gluten, but only when hydrolyzed by water. Now, in Indian corn there is, so far as I know, no gliadin in any weighable quantity, and therefore there can be no gluten formed with Indian corn. Wheat has more of these gluten-forming elements than any other grain I know. It is peculiarly the material which produces the most gluten. Others have it more or less, but Indian corn, as I recollect it I have not looked at the analysis for a long time-I do not think has any. They use the word "gluten" to designate the by-product of the manufacture of starch, which comes from saving the skins of the Indian corn and pressing the oil out of the germ, which contains large quantities of protein, and these products are sold under the name of gluten; but they are not gluten in any chemical or proper sense. Mr. SLOAN. Have they the nourishing qualities of gluten, and the upbuilding qualities for making tissue and bone that gluten has? Dr. WILEY. Every kind of gluten has its own specific kind of building power. They are not all alike. For instance, proteins which form tryptophane, as it is called, will promote growth. Prof. Underhill, of Yale University, has just written a book on The Physiology of the Amino Acids, in which there is a diagram showing the fatal effects of zein when fed to mice and how tryptophane prolongs life. The following is the diagram: 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 days FIGURE 1. The thick lines show the survival periods (in days) of 21 individual mice upon the zein die: with tyrosine added. The thin lines show the same for 19 mice upon the zein diet with tryptophane added.--(From the Journal of Physiology, volume 35.) As far as being oxidized in the body and broken down to urea is concerned, there is very little difference in the proteins, but as to their ability to build up the tissues of the body, there is the very greatest difference in proteins. Indian corn zein forms no stone which can be builded into the structure, and therefore it is not valuable as building material, although it is valuable for oxidation and the formation of urea, and for various uses for which protein is used in the body aside from the building of tissue. Mr. SLOAN. Was not Indian corn used as the basic food for the original owners of this continent, and were not a great many magnificent individuals built up on Indian corn, and did they not use that for their flour or meal entirely? There was no wheat on this continent, was there? Dr. WILEY. I do not believe there was, but there were lots of nuts, and there was lots of game. The Indians did not subsist entirely on grain. That was the basis of their diet. Indian corn is a splendid food. I have nothing to say against Indian corn and its products as food when properly mixed to secure growth and secure the full value of the food. But if you take a cereal whose proteins are preeminently fitted and suited for the building of the body, and substitute that with a material whose proteins are eminently unfitted for the building of the body, there must be and always will be serious adulteration. Mr. SLOAN. How do the percentages of gluten in ordinary wheat compare with the ordinary protein in corn? Dr. WILEY. There are more proteins in wheat than there are in corn, and less than in oats. Mr. SLOAN. What is the relative percentage of gluten, as you say, in the wheat and the proteins in corn? Dr. WILEY. The proteins of wheat are almost all gluten. Almost all the protein of wheat forms gluten. There is some protein in wheat that does not form gluten, but it is only a small amount. There is no gluten formed at all with Indian corn, so far as I know. Mr. SLOAN. To follow that further, what, then, are the gluten percentages of the protein in wheat and the protein in corn? Dr. WILEY. The protein in Indian corn is about 9 or 10 per cent an average of 9 per cent-in wheat about 12 per cent, and in oats it is 2 per cent more than that-14 per cent. Mr. SLOAN. What is glucose, and how is it obtained? There is a little dispute about it. Dr. WILEY. Glucose has two significations. Its chemical signification is the same as dextrose. Mr. SLOAN. It is starch? Dr. WILEY. It is not starch, but you make dextrose out of starch; but commercial glucose is a product from the incomplete hydrolysis of starch by the reduction to a thick pasty mass, which consists of dextrose and dextrine, a little maltose, and a little ash-not much ash nowadays, because they make it with hydrochloric acid, and it only takes a little of it to make a better product than the old one made with sulphuric acid; and, then, instead of trying to get the hydrochloric acid out of that, they neutralize it with a little soda, making common salt. Mr. SLOAN. Chloride of sodium? |