It has been thought that the indigestibility of new bread was due to its moisture, which made it difficult to chew and at the same time prevented it from soaking up the saliva. But this explanation would not be acceptable, because in spite of the higher percentage of water content (65%) of boiled rice than bread (35%), the digestibility of boiled rice is much superior.
To investigate the digestibility of new and stale bread, the next experiment was performed. Experiment. Subject Four college women were employed and were divided into two groups A and B, two subjects each.
Experimental period had nine days and was divided in three stages of equal length.
The subjects of A group ate bread in this order, i. e. hot newly baked at first, then twelve hours after baking, at last 24 hours after baking, on the contrary, those of B group took them in the opposing order.
Diet. Each subject took bread about 100-150gm, at each meal without toasting, but with side dishes, such as shown in table 2.
Three days menus were repeated in each stage.
The digestibility of bread was conjectured from that of the total diet during each stage, and was calculated on next formula.
Digestibility=Intake-Output in feces/Intake×100
Result, The average nutritional intake of each subject per day duriug in each stage were shown in table 3, the ratio of nutrients contained in bread and side dishes was shown in table 4, and the digestibility of bread new or stale were shown in table 6, respectively.
From the results of this experiment we could not find any difference between the digestibility of new and stale bread.
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