lusk: food economics 



393 



Thirty cents will buy more than half the family's food require- 

 ment at an average cost of 5 cents per thousand calories, instead 

 of 14 cents, the average cost at the school. If $25 is spent each 

 month for food, 80 cents a day is available, or 7 cents for a 

 thousand calories. The margin is narrow. 



It would be well if the family knew that more than half its 

 food supply could be had for 30 cents a day, and that this bread, 

 butter, milk, and sugar are of equal nutritive value to the best 

 the country affords. The remaining 5400 calories could then 

 be bought at a cost of 9 cents per thousand. This sum will 

 purchase most of the usual foodstuffs, with the exception of meat. 



As a matter of statistics, the annual consumption of cane 

 sugar in the United States in 1912-13 reached 85.4 lbs. per 

 capita, which is the equivalent of 2000 calories daily for a family 

 of five, or twenty per cent of the energy requirement. This 

 quantity of sugar costs the nation a million and a half dollars 

 daily, and the rich harvest to be reaped by substitution of only a 

 part of this by saccharin, which has no fuel value whatever, is 

 obvious. 



It has appeared to those at work in the laboratory that it 

 would be of great importance to associate the caloric value of 

 food with cost in dollars and cents. For the understanding of 

 this, table IX has been prepared, showing the cost of 2500 

 calories, which is the energy requirement of an average adult 

 of sedentary occupation. 



True food reform demands the sale of food by calories and 

 not by pounds. Professor Murlin has advocated that the 



