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THE possibility that a particular agent is responsible for the poor calcifying properties of cereal grains has been a focal point of interest to students of nutrition for some years. It has long been recognised that grains are a poor source of Ca, yet this deficiency has failed to provide an adequate explanation.

INTEREST in the availability of phytin-P was stimulated by the report of Bruce & Callow [1934] that the rachitogenic manifestation of cereals was effected by the low availability of cereal P. McCance & Widdowson [1935] found that in man as much as one-half of the phytin-P was unavailable. The possible importance of this was revealed by their analyses which showed that phytin-P accounted for 46A4-66-0 % of the total P present in the common cereal grains such as wheat, maize and rolled oats.Recently it was shown by Templin & Steenbock that immature maize [1933, 1] and germinated autolysed maize [1933, 2] were far less rachitogenic than the matured kemel. This difference was demonstrated by Lowe & Steenbock [1936] to be paralleled by an increase in inorganic P. Phytin, isolated from wheat bran, when fed as such was a poor source of phosphorus in a rachitogenic ration. The basal ration used in these experiments was Ration 2965 composed of 76 % yellow maize, 20 % wheat gluten, 3 % CaCO3 and 1 % NaCl.

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