Substitutes For Bread

After all, the problem of selecting a suitable starchy food for the diabetic is governed as much by the necessity of furnishing some form of food which will satisfy the craving for farinaceous material as for the actual nourishment which it may contain.

The most difficult of all starchy food for the patient to forego is bread. Much ingenuity has been expended in attempts to devise substitutes for it, and many preparations for making artificial breads, biscuits, rusk, or cakes with eggs and butter are sold in market for this purpose. Some of these are palatable for a time, but many have been found to contain 60 or 80 per cent of starch - fully as much as wheaten bread - while others contain no nutriment at all.

Some authorities, as Germain See and Dujardin-Beaumetz, advise giving potato meal instead of bread, five ounces per diem, which may be cooked in any form without sugar.

Von Noorden has recently strongly recommended the substitution of oat flour or oat flakes for bread. The flakes are cooked in salt water with addition of butter and egg albumen, the following quantity being allowed daily: Oats, 250 grammes; albumen, 100 grammes; butter, 300 grammes.

Torrefied starch may be used by some diabetics. The starch is prepared by baking a large ball of flour so thoroughly that the starch granules in the interior of the mass are burst open by the heat. Torrefied bread or toast consists of thin cut pieces of bread which are toasted through and through until almost black before a hot fire until both the gluten and the starch are disorganised to some extent. Well-browned bread crust is of the same nature.

The breads made from flour especially prepared for diabetics are: (a) Gluten bread; (b) bran bread; (c) almond bread; (d) inulin bread; (e) soya bread.

(A) Gluten Bread

Gluten bread was first used by Bouchardat. It is made by washing wheat flour in such a manner as to remove the starchy granules, leaving the gluten behind. Such bread is certain to contain more or less starch, and not seldom it has both starch and sugar. It is much more tiresome to eat than any ordinary bread, and unless prepared by a very reliable manufacturer it has little to recommend it. It is not agreeable to masticate, for it is often unpleasantly tough and stringy. It is difficult to panify, but it may be aerated. Gluten biscuits are more palatable than gluten bread, but most of these preparations have the disadvantage of not keeping fresh for more than a week or ten days.

Gluten flour is used for thickening broths, egg puddings, etc.

The following are receipts for utilising gluten flour:

Jeffries's Gluten Biscuit For Diabetics

Gluten flour........................................ 1 cup.

Best bran, previously scalded......................... I cup.

Baking powder (or the equivalent of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar)............................... 1 teaspoonful.

Salt............................................... to taste.

Eggs .............................................. 2.

Milk or water...................................... I cup.

Mix thoroughly.