Because of the quantity of starch in flour, potatoes and rice, it is obvious that one should not eat freely of more than one of these at the same meal, else the digestive organs will be overworked in converting the starch into sugar and the liver overworked in converting the sugar into glycogen and back again into sugar; and the liver will be overloaded in storing it up. By far the best plan is to eat but one cereal at a meal. Rice contains no gluten, hence it cannot be raised in bread. * * * * * =Corn= (maize) is a native of America and has been one of the most extensively used cereals. Corn bread and corn meal mush were important foods with the early settlers, partly because they are nutritious and partly because the corn meal was easily prepared at the mill and was cheap. The germ of the corn is larger in proportion than the germs of other grains, and it contains much fat; therefore it is heating. For this reason, it is strange that corn bread is so largely used by inhabitants of the southern states. It is a more appropriate food for winter in cold climates. Because of the fat in the germ, cornmeal readily turns rancid, and, on this account, the germ is separated and omitted from many cornmeal preparations. _Hulled corn_, sometimes called lye hominy, is one of the old-fashioned ways of using corn. In its preparation, the skin is loosened by steeping the corn in a weak solution of lye, which gives it a peculiar flavor, pleasing to many. _Cornmeal mush_ is a valuable breakfast food. _Pop corn._ The bursting of the shell in popping corn is due to the expansion of the moisture in the starch, occasioned by the heat. _Green sweet corn_ does not contain the same proportion of starch as cornmeal, it being, in its tender state, mostly water. It is laxative, because it is eaten with the coarse hull, which causes more rapid peristalsis of the intestines. * * * * * [Sidenote: Breakfast Foods] The claims made for various advertised breakfast foods would be amusing if they were not intended to mislead. Nearly all of them have sufficient merit to sell them, if the advertiser confines himself strictly to the truth, but the ever pertinent desire to excel, which is one great incentive to progress, leads to exaggeration. For example: Claim is sometimes made that they contain more nutriment than the same quantity of beef. Reference to above table does not bear out such statement; they contain more starch but less protein. It is also claimed by some advertisers that breakfast foods are brain and nerve foods. The idea that certain foods are brain and nerve foods is erroneous, excepting that any tissue building food (protein) builds nerve and brain tissue as it builds any other tissue. There is a prevalent idea that fish and celery are brain food, but there is no scientific basis for the theory.