ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE NUTRITION INVESTI- 

 GATIONS OF THE OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



By C. F. Langworthy, Ph. D., 

 Expert in Charge of Nutrition Investigations. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In recent years the experimental study of various problems con- 

 nected with food and nutrition of man and domestic animals has been 

 actively followed in the United States. Some of the work has been 

 of a very practical nature and some has been highly technical. 

 Though usually not considered together, the studies of the food of 

 man and of animals have much in common, for, of cour.se, the physio- 

 logical laws wdiich underlie the nutrition of the animal body are 

 essentially the same for all w-arm-blooded animals. Then, too, many 

 experimental methods are common to both classes of investigation, 

 at least as regards the principles on which they are ba.sed, though it 

 is needless to say that the details and the manner of using the meth- 

 ods are varied. A considerable part of this inquiry into problems con- 

 cerned with the nutritive value of agricultural products and the laws 

 of nutrition has been carried on in connection wath the work of the 

 agricultural experiment stations. In the earlier years of the experi- 

 ment-station movement in this country investigations which had to do 

 with food in a broad sense were quite largely confined to work with 

 domestic animals. However, early in their history many of the ex- 

 periment stations studied the nutritive value of grains and other foods 

 used by man as well as various problems connected wnth the storage, 

 handling, and transportation of food products and related questions, 

 and after a time a number of them included studies of the food of 

 man in their regular work. 



EARLY NUTRITION WORK IN THE UNITED STATES. 



There had been, indeed, a considerable amount of study of the food 

 of man — and of domestic animals also — before the experiment sta- 

 tions were established. An interesting investigation on the subject 

 of human nutrition, namely, a study of the digestibility of some 

 common food materials, was prosecuted by J. R. Young, in Phila- 

 delphia, as early as 1803, and perhaps almost continuously since that 

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