Bread the way it was meant to be.

	Based Mills	Mockmill 200 PRO	KoMo Classic	Meadows 8”
Price	$[X]	$890	$619–814 by wood	$5,000
Stone material	Natural granite	Corundum ceramic (manufactured)	Corundum ceramic (manufactured)	Natural NC pink granite
Stone diameter	7 in.	3.5 in. (90 mm)	3.35 in. (85 mm)	8 in.
Grinding surface	About 38 sq. in.	About 10 sq. in.	About 9 sq. in.	About 50 sq. in.
Stone dress	Gaines “Texas” dress, curved furrows	[None / factory face, confirm]	[None / factory face, confirm]	[Confirm]
Flour temperature	Under 100°F	Up to 135°F [your test]	Up to 135°F [your test]	[Confirm]
Motor	1 hp (about 750 W), rated 30,000 hours	600 W	360 W	2 hp
Output	[X]	About 7 oz/min	About 3.5 oz/min	Up to 50 lb/hour
Power	[Standard 120 V outlet? confirm]	120 V	120 V	220 V or 115/230 V
Fits on a counter	Yes	Yes	Yes	No. About 34 × 32 × 57 in. on a stand
Weight	[X] lb	[Confirm]	[Confirm]	[Confirm]
Warranty	[X] years	[Confirm]	[Confirm]	[Confirm]

Grinding stones	Natural granite, 7 in. diameter
Stone dressing	Gaines “Texas” dress (U.S. Pat. 11,372, 1854): 4 curved master furrows with a quarter draft, plus cracking grooves
Flour temperature	Under 100°F at the spout [test conditions]
Drive	1 hp (about 750 W) [motor type], rated 30,000 hours
Output	[X] cups of flour per minute on fine
Grind range	Cracked grain to fine flour
Hopper capacity	[X] cups
Dimensions	[W × D × H]
Weight	[X] lb
Power	[X] V, [X] W
Warranty	[X] years
Made in	[Location]

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	Whole wheat berries	MREs	Store-bought flour
Shelf life	25–30+ years sealed with oxygen absorbers [verify]	About 3–5 years, less in heat [verify]	About 1 year white, 3–6 months whole wheat [verify]
Cost per 2,000 calories	About $[0.75–1.50] in bulk [verify]	About $[10–15] [verify]	About $[1–2] [verify]
Nutrition	Whole grain: fiber, B vitamins, vitamin E, minerals	Complete meal, heavily processed	White: mostly starch
Nutrition after storage	Vitamin E and B6 essentially unchanged after 3 years¹³	[MRE vitamin retention, if we want it]	Whole wheat: oils start breaking down once milled. About a third of vitamin E is gone in 10 months.¹² [45% in 1 day / 90% in 72 hours, once we find the source]
Versatility	Bread, tortillas, pancakes, pasta, porridge, cracked cereal	What’s in the pouch	Baking
Storage space	Dense, stacks in 5-gallon buckets	Bulky packaging	Dense, but doesn’t last

What milling takes out

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own food tables show what’s lost when whole wheat flour becomes white flour.²

Per 100 g of flour	Whole wheat	White	Lost in milling	Added back by “enrichment”?
Fiber	10.7 g	2.7 g	75%	No
Magnesium	137 mg	22 mg	84%	No
Manganese	4.1 mg	0.7 mg	83%	No
Zinc	2.6 mg	0.7 mg	73%	No
Potassium	363 mg	107 mg	71%	No
Vitamin B6	0.41 mg	0.04 mg	89%	No
Vitamin E	0.71 mg	0.06 mg	92%	No
Choline	31 mg	10 mg	67%	No
Selenium	62 µg	34 µg	45%	No
Thiamin (B1)	0.50 mg	0.12 mg	76%	Yes
Riboflavin (B2)	0.17 mg	0.04 mg	76%	Yes
Niacin (B3)	5.0 mg	1.3 mg	75%	Yes
Iron	3.6 mg	1.2 mg	68%	Yes
Folate	44 µg	26 µg	41%	Replaced with synthetic folic acid

“Enriched” flour adds back five things: thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, iron and folic acid. Enrichment started in 1941, after federal nutrition surveys found deficiencies across large parts of the population.³ Everything else in the table stays out.

What the research found

In the early 1970s, British doctors who had worked in Africa noticed that rural populations eating unrefined grain rarely got the bowel and metabolic diseases common in the West. Denis Burkitt and Hugh Trowell, with colleagues Neil Painter and Kenneth Heaton, published a string of papers proposing that the missing fiber was a common cause. They linked low-fiber, refined diets to:

• Constipation and slow transit time. Fiber made stools larger and softer and moved food through faster.⁴
• Diverticular disease. They called it “a deficiency disease of Western civilization.“⁵
• **Appendicitis and hiatal hernia.**⁶
• **Colon cancer.**⁷
• Heart disease. Fiber helped lower cholesterol.⁸
• **Diabetes.**⁹
• Overeating. Fiber was “an obstacle to energy intake,” so whole foods fill you up on fewer calories.¹⁰

The U.S. government took notice. In 1977 the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition published Dietary Goals for the United States, the first federal dietary goals for Americans. Its first food recommendation was to **“increase consumption of fruits and vegetables and whole grains.”**¹ USDA tests in the report found whole wheat bread had two to three times the crude fiber of white bread. It also cited a Michigan State study in which overweight young men ate 12 slices of bread a day with their meals and lost an average of 12.7 pounds in eight weeks. The USDA’s own review of fiber research followed in 1978.¹¹

This information is educational and comes from the published sources listed below. It has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The Based Mills grain mill is a kitchen appliance and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Sources

1. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals for the United States, 2nd ed. (1977), “U.S. Dietary Goals” summary and pp. 21–26. govinfo.gov
2. USDA Agricultural Research Service, FoodData Central, SR Legacy (the successor to USDA Agriculture Handbook No. 8): Wheat flour, whole-grain (FDC 168893); Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, unenriched (FDC 169761); enriched, bleached (FDC 168894).
3. Federal flour and bread enrichment program, 1941. Baking Business
4. Burkitt DP, Walker ARP, Painter NS. “Effect of dietary fibre on stools and the transit-times, and its role in the causation of disease.” Lancet 1972;2:1408–12.
5. Painter NS, Burkitt DP. “Diverticular disease of the colon: a deficiency disease of Western civilization.” BMJ 1971;2:450–4.
6. Burkitt DP. “The aetiology of appendicitis.” Br J Surg 1971;58:695–9. Burkitt DP, James PA. “Low-residue diets and hiatus hernia.” Lancet 1973;2:128–30.
7. Burkitt DP. “Epidemiology of cancer of the colon and rectum.” Cancer 1971;28:3–13.
8. Trowell H. “Ischemic heart disease and dietary fiber.” Am J Clin Nutr 1972;25:926–32.
9. Trowell HC. “Dietary-fiber hypothesis of the etiology of diabetes mellitus.” Diabetes 1975;24:762–5.
10. Heaton KW. “Food fibre as an obstacle to energy intake.” Lancet 1973;2:1418–21.
11. Kelsay JL. “A review of research on effects of fiber intake on man.” Am J Clin Nutr 1978;31:142–59.
12. Nielsen MM, Hansen Å. “Stability of vitamin E in wheat flour and whole wheat flour during storage.” Cereal Chem 2008;85:716–20. (About 32% of vitamin E lost over 297 days.) Also Chakraborty S, et al. “Inactivation of lipase in grains: processing methods, kinetics, and storage stability.” Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf 2026;25:e70629.
13. “Effects of Fumigation on Wheat in Storage” series: Slover HT, Lehmann J, “IV. Tocopherols,” Cereal Chem 1972;49:412–15; Polansky MM, Toepfer EW, “III. Vitamin B-6,” Cereal Chem 1971;48:392–96.

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