JOURNAL 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. VI MAY 19, 1916 No. 10 



BIOCHEMISTRY. — The biochemical analysis of nutrition. 1 

 Carl L. Alsberg, Bureau of Chemistry. 



There are a number of ways in which nutrition may be studied. 

 By the statistical method the effect of diet upon definite social 

 or geographical groups of individuals or upon inmates of hos- 

 pitals, asylums, or barracks is determined. The physical 

 method determines the energy income and outgo of the individual. 

 The physiological method determines the role in nutrition of 

 individual organs. Nutrition may, furthermore, be studied 

 by the method of biochemical analysis. This method seeks 

 to follow each one of the many chemical complexes that enter 

 into the composition of food in its course through the animal 

 organism. Therefore, for the purposes of this method the 

 component chemical radicals of the food must be known. This 

 information can be obtained only by resolving the food elements 

 into their component parts, that is, by analyzing them bio- 

 chemically. This paper, therefore, presents a discussion of 

 some of the component parts of the food elements and of the 

 fate in the metabolism of some of the individual chemical com- 

 plexes that are found free or combined in food, in so far as their 

 fate is understood or surmised. 



My reason for selecting this particular subject is that during 

 recent years perhaps the most interesting contributions to 

 knowledge made by biochemists have been in this field. Among 



1 The address of the retiring President of the Chemical Society of Washing- 

 ton, given at a joint meeting of that Society with the Washington Academy of 

 Sciences, January 13, 1916. 



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