meat, or other iron-rich food; something containing vitamines, such as
greens or other vitamine-rich food; something to reënforce the proteins,
as milk, eggs, meat, or nuts. It is not possible to make a perfect diet
with only one other kind of food besides white bread. It can be done with
three: bread, milk, and spinach, for example.

If we substitute whole wheat for white bread, we can make a complete diet
with two foods--this and milk. We get from the bran and the germ what in
the other case we got from the spinach. _All the cereals can be
effectively supplemented by milk and green vegetables._ If green
vegetables (or substitutes for them like dried peas and beans or fruit)
are hard to get we should give preference to cereals from which the bran
coats have not been removed, such as oatmeal and whole wheat. Then the
diet will not be deficient in iron, which is not supplied in large enough
amounts from white bread and milk. Oatmeal is the richest in iron of all
the cereals.

With such knowledge, we may alter our diet very greatly without danger of
undernutrition. But we must learn to cook other cereals at least as well
as we do wheat. Without proper cooking they are unpalatable and
unwholesome, and they are not so easy to cook as wheat. They take a longer
time and we cannot get the same culinary effects, since with the exception
of rye they will not make a light loaf. Fortunately we are not asked to
deny ourselves wheat entirely, only to substitute other cereals for part
of it. Let each housewife resolve when next she buys flour to buy at the
same time one-fourth as much of some other grain, finely ground, rye,
corn, barley, according to preference, and mix the two thoroughly at once.
Then she will be sure not to forget to carry out her good intentions.
Bread made of such a mixture will be light and tender, and anything that
cannot be made with it had better be dispensed with in these times.