Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/599

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WHEN DOES A FOOD BECOME A LUXURY
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these foods: Quaker oats, 3.1 cents; Nichol's pearl hominy, 4.5; Cream of Wheat, 8.8; Grape Nuts, 14.6; Shredded Whole Wheat, 15; Force, 16.5; Flaked Rice, 18.2; Granula, 27.2. To this may be added the cost of some other brands, as Quaker Corn Flakes, 13.3; Kellogg's Corn Flakes, 13.3; Maple Corn Flakes, 14.5; Post Toasties, 14.5; Grape Sugar Flakes, 17.8; Malta Vita, 18.4; Sugar Corn Flakes, 20; Holland Rusk, 22.8; Puffed Wheat, 29.1 cents. At this rate a bushel of wheat which might be originally worth $1.00 would, when made into a breakfast food, cost the housekeeper from $5.00 to $12.00, calculating that 75 per cent, of the grain is available as food, as is the case in making wheat flour. Oatmeal in bulk sells at five cents a pound, and simple preparations of the other grains at from five to seven cents.

These are a few of the illustrations to show "where the money goes," or at least some of it, expended in the ordinary household. Some of us are living on the luxuries of the market, and use them as food to furnish the proteids and carbohydrates and fat for daily consumption. Instead of using the oak and maple and pine for fuel, we are feeding the fire with mahogany, and circassian walnut and rare imported woods.