The marked improvement in the apparent nutritive value of soybean protein after heating has long been recognized. The fundamental cause of this improvement has never been fully understood. Furthermore, commercial soybean oil meal varies considerably in nutritive value although heat treatment is common in most processing plants. Since heating is generally regarded as deleterious to the nutritive quality of protein, the following investigations of various treatments of soybean oil meal are of particular importance in developing a soybean or soybean oil meal of maximum and uniform nutritive value