White bread, the American "staff of life," is the greatest humbug ever foisted upon a civilized people. "Staff of life," indeed! Why, it is more like a staff of death. It is composed largely of the starchy part of the wheat. It is greatly deficient in the constituents essential in feeding the muscles, brain and bones. A large part of these valuable food elements have been removed, with the bran and shorts. But, astounding as it may seem to a reasoning human being, this article of food is consumed from one end of the country to the other, and everywhere is looked upon as "the staff of life."

"What, in heaven's name, are our public schools for? There is, absolutely, no excuse for such depraved ignorance. All scientific investigators agree as to the inferiority of white flour as a food. The teeth fall out, the bones soften and the muscles never develop if it is depended upon to furnish nourishment for the body.

"The gluten of cereal foods is their nitro-genized element, the element on which depends their life-sustaining value, and this element is, in the white and foolishly fashionable flour, almost entirely removed, while the starch, the inferior element, is left behind and constitutes the entire bulk and inferior nutriment of such flours. To use flour from which the gluten has been removed, is almost criminal." - Dr. Cutter of Harvard University in the American Medical Weekly.

No wonder some children never grow, and are always sick and weak! When fed on such a starvation diet as this nothing else could be expected.

The use of this one article of diet has caused thousands to suffer with digestive troubles. It is especially favorable to constipation, and is frequently the sole cause of this annoying trouble.

A grain of wheat contains the elements necessary to feed the body, in almost perfect proportions, and if foods were made of wholewheat flour the body would be perfectly nourished in every part.

Every man who knows anything of foods and their properties is fully aware of these facts, and why medical men everywhere ignore them in advising their patients is beyond the comprehension of the writer.

Not long ago, an experiment was made with dogs. Some were fed on white bread, others on Graham or entire wheat bread, and still others were given nothing to eat. The dogs that were allowed no food lived about as long as those fed on white bread, while those fed on the entire wheat bread thrived, and were apparently able to maintain life until the end of its natural term. This proves beyond question that whoever is striving to subsist on white bread is starving a part of his body with almost as much certainty as if he were eating nothing at all, and that he will actually die about as soon as if fasting.

It is generally admitted by authorities that the outside covering of the wheat grain which is removed in the refining process of making flour contains, in addition to its valuable nitrogenous elements (muscle builders), a large amount of waste matter which is of great value, not only in adding bulk to the food, but in assisting the peristaltic action of the bowels. Most persons suffering from constipation find that the trouble immediately disappears when entire wheat bread is substituted for white bread.

The most ignorant athlete usually has intelligence enough to know that white bread is an inferior food, that it will not furnish the elements in proper proportion to feed the body, and any one who has trained or who has followed an occupation requiring great muscular activity, and has had an opportunity to test white flour as a food in comparison with whole or entire wheat, will also immediately indorse this conclusion.

"Superfine flour is distinctly a modern invention. The ancients used unbolted meal altogether, the present disease-producing devices known as bolting machines being then not in use. Indeed, many nations at the present day, as the Germans, Scandinavians, and, in fact, most nations with the exception of the French, English, and American nations, still adhere substantially to the ancient custom in this regard. No doubt the hardihood of the native German peasant is in great part justly attributable to the highly nourishing qualities of his 'Black bread.' " - J. H. Kellogg, M.D.

I will never forget the first time in my life that occasion occurred to prove to my own satisfaction by actual personal tests the great inferiority of white-flour bread as a food. When quite young I concluded that life on a farm would strengthen my then greatly weakened body, and I visited a farming section in one of the Western States, and secured a "job" as a farm hand, or rather farmer's boy, as I was not considered equal in strength to be a full-fledged "hand."

Now, in this particular section the previous generation had been mostly "raised" on corn bread and bacon, and they felt somewhat above such a rough fare, so the ignoramuses substituted white for the corn bread. I had a little knowledge of food values, even at that early-age, and if milk had not been plentifully supplied, am satisfied that I could not have subsisted on the food furnished. But during this particular time I had the opportunity, far from pleasant, I can assure the reader, of seeing and feeling my muscular strength increase and decrease, as influenced by the diet. As I came there for the particular purpose of acquiring strength, I had naturally formed a habit of almost daily testing my strength in various ways. About once or twice each week, at the noon meal, they would have baked beans and com bread, and within an hour after such a meal, following several days wherein white bread was the principal article of diet, I would actually be a third stronger. Not only was I greatly increased in strength, as I found by actual tests, but my energies seemed to vastly increase. While compelled to subsist mostly on the white-bread diet I dragged through my work - felt listless and half ill all the time.

But one meal that contained Nature's true nourishment transformed me into a new being.

Of course, where fresh meats are furnished with white bread, its deficiency is not so greatly noticed, as the meats, to a certain extent, supply the elements that the white bread lacks.

But the most astonishing and incontrovertible proof of the terrible deficiency of white bread as a food was startlingly illustrated by those very people in that section. A poorer lot of men, physically, I never saw before nor since. They had no stamina, vigor, or beauty of body. And the women! Why, at 25 they would begin to fade; at 30 they were old. Before 30 a majority of them had to be supplied with false teeth.

And why?

They were practically living an ideal life, in pure air, with plenty of exercise, and the natural conditions were in every way such that they should have produced the highest types of manhood and womanhood, physically.

The cause of their utter physical ugliness, weakness and general inferiority was unquestionably due largely to the diet of white bread, and at this present moment I believe that white bread, in many parts of this country, is actually starving people to death wholesale. They are eating plentifully, but the tissues necessary to the performance of the vital functions are being slowly starved.

Remember that muscular power is not used solely for locomotion and movements that require the use of hands, arms, and upper parts of the outer muscular system. It is required in every digestive and vital action of the body. The heart is a muscular organ. The stomach is surrounded by muscles that help in the process of digestion. Muscular power is necessary even to turn your eyes; therefore when you starve your muscles by a white-bread diet, every organ or function of the entire body suffers in consequence and it would also be well not to forget that the same food elements which nourish the muscles also constitute the principal part of all the important digestive juices.

The chemical analyses of all foods differ so much that it is difficult to form conclusions accurately in every detail. In order for my readers to see clearly the difference in the analysis of whole wheat and the ordinary white flour, I quote from Dr. Holbrook who gives Blythe's authority for table of analyses showing the difference. It would be well to call the attention to the great difference in the muscle-making elements contained in different kinds of wheat and in wheat grown in different parts of the country. This varies from about ten to twenty-one per cent. I have taken for granted that the whole-wheat flour, which has been here analyzed and compared with the white flour, has been made from the same kind of wheat.

Chemical analysis of whole wheat flour and white flour is as follows: