The influence of war-time milling control on the composition, digestibility and nutritive value of the wheaten offals

Abstract

The investigations described in this paper are concerned with the influence of the various war-time changes in milling practice on the composition, digestibility and nutritive value, both for ruminants, and pigs, of the wheaten milling offals. The need for obtaining a larger output of flour for human consumption led to the raising of the rate of flour extraction from 70 to 75 % at an early stage of the war, and this was increased further to 85% with the introduction of the ‘national wheat-meal loaf’ in 1942. Two grades of wheaten offals only were marketed at this stage of the war—fine bran and coarse bran. Early in 1943 it became permissible to incorporate a proportion of rye, barley or de-husked oats in the wheat before milling. It was considered unlikely that the inclusion of rye or de-husked oats would exert any adverse influence on the nutritive value of the milling offals. When barley is used to dilute the wheat, however, the husk from this grain finds its way into the offals, and it was therefore to be anticipated that the presence of the barley husk would cause the fibre content of the offals to be raised and their nutritive value to be lowered. Authority has been given for the use of a grist that will give rise to a flour containing up to 10% of barley flour, but at the time of writing it would appear that, in actual practice, flour millers have not exceeded 10% of barley in the grist itself.