Business & Finance: Germy Flour

Keeping the starch and discarding the “hearts of wheat” from flour greatly irks such scientists as Dr. Robert Runnels Williams because it “throws away the mechanism necessary for the metabolism of that starch” (TIME, July 11). Last week in Chicago, Morris Mills, Inc. demonstrated to the trade for the first time a practical process for making flour without removing the germ. The trade was interested; present were seven foreign consuls, U. S. officials and representatives of 50% of U. S. flour production. Edward Jacob and Edgar Martin Miller, father and son, Missouri millers, invented the process; they interested Dan Brown, former Hearst circulation manager, who in turn organized Morris Mills, Inc. two years ago and directed subsequent tests. Sales claims for the germ flour: added nutritive value, superior aroma, flavor, palatability, long-keeping quality without preservatives, 25% reduction in amount of shortening needed. Chief claim: germ flour improves metabolism so greatly as to increase consumption; if everybody ate an extra slice of bread each day, 50,000,000 extra bushels of U. S. wheat would be used annually.