When the United States was called on to supply the Allies with much of
its wheat and flour, we fortunately found at hand a plentiful supply
of a great variety of other cereals. The use of corn was, of course,
not an experiment--generations of Southerners have flourished on it.
But we also had oats, rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, and such local
products as the grain sorghums, which are grown in the South and West.
All of them are cereals and all can be used interchangeably with wheat
in our diet.

To understand clearly the value of cereals in the diet to-day, it is
well to review the part played by food in general. Europe to-day is
eating to live. She therefore thinks of food not in terms of menus
but as a means of keeping up bodily functions, as sources of protein,
carbohydrate and fat--terms seldom heard outside of the university a
few years ago.


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD

We need food first of all to burn as fuel for all the activities of
the body, just as any other machine needs fuel. The fuel value of
food, or its energy, is measured in _calories_. A calorie measures the
amount of heat or energy given off when anything burns, whether it is
coal in a stove or food in the body.

Practically all foods give this fuel or energy, but some give much
more than others. Fats give more fuel than an equal weight of any
other food. Sugar and foods rich in starch like flour and corn meal
are fuel foods. This is one of the reasons why they are chosen to be