96 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



fare should consume enough of the articles mentioned to supply 

 the requisite amount of albuminous nutrients he would probably 

 overload the organism with carbohydrates and waste matters; 

 although this can be said not as founded upon direct and con- 

 clusive, but only upon indirect and inferential, evidence. It 

 is suggestive to note in this connection that many authorities 1 

 have advanced the opinion that American dietaries as a rule ac- 

 cord too prominent a place to carbonaceous foods, and if this 

 be true of our people at large, it must be especially true of the 

 food of students. The predominance in the dietary lists of our 

 students of such carbonaceous foods (and they are regarded as 

 carbonaceous since the ratio of carbohydrates to protein is 

 greater than that required for perfect nutrition) as white bread, 

 potatoes, griddle cakes, cabbage, beets, and the like, indicates 

 that they are too highly esteemed, relatively speaking, in our 

 own locality, as they are elsewhere. 



Kellogg maintains that the proportion of albumen to carbohy- 

 drates in a model bill of fare should be as 1 to 7, while Atwater 

 demands that the ration be much richer in protein, the desired 

 proportion being, in his opinion, about as 1 to 3 or 4. Other 

 estimates lie somewhere between these extremes, 2 the weight of 

 testimony, however, seeming to declare that Atwater's formula 

 would give too "narrow" a ration, and that the albuminoids 

 should not constitute more than 1-6 or 1-7 of the quantity of the 

 other foods. !Now, the composition of the ordinary food ma- 

 terials shows that few of them contain an excessive amount of 

 protein, w T hile the bulk of them are deficient in this respect, as 

 will appear from the following table: 



J For instance, Jordan, op. cit., p. 57; Atwater, op. cit., p. 18. 



2 For a good discussion of the question, see Stevenson & Murphy, loc. cit. 



