Dietary Study

Excerpt from A Dietary Study: Of Some Kansas Institutions Under the Control of the State Board of Administration The importance of dietary studies has only been recognized for the past seventy-five years. The people of the United States have been regarded as generous feeders, as we grow all the food that we really need and have an excess to export to the nations abroad. The question as to the food of the individual becomes more complicated when applied to large groups of people, as to boarding schools, reformatories, orphanages and hospitals. Questions as to the quality, the quantity and the cost of foods furnished to such large units of people are constantly arising. In order to study this understandingly we must first consider how food nourishes and sustains the body. The food is used in two ways: First, to build up and repair body tissue; and second, to furnish the body with the energy required to maintain vital processes and for muscular work. We are familiar in general with the fact that the protein or nitrogenous foods, such as meat, milk and eggs, are needed to build up the tissues, and that fats, or butter and oil, and carbohydrates, such as cereals and sugar, are needed to furnish the energy for work. It is only within a comparatively few years that we have been able to measure dietaries in a scientific manner. Following the European chemists, Prof. W. O. Atwater was a pioneer in this country in making food investigations, and constructed what was called a respiration calorimeter, which was a large box in which an experimenter could remain for several days, all food used could be weighed, and all the products of the digestion and respiration could be analyzed. The work done, or mechanical energy produced by the food eaten, could also be accurately measured. It has also been ascertained that if food is burned in a bomb calorimeter in the laboratory, the amount of heat evolved corresponds very closely to the heat or energy produced by the digestion of the food in the body. The analysis of a food tells us the calories of heat or energy, for it is established that - One pound of protein gives 1,860 calories. One pound of fat gives 4,220 calories. One pound of carbohydrates gives 1,860 calories. A calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water from 0° to 1°C. This explanation is necessary that the data shown in the tables following may be intelligible. There are two general methods of studying the amount of food needed for an individual. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.