260 VITALITY AND EFFICIENCY WITH RESTRICTED DIET. 



DIETS. 



In any plan to provide a pronounced reduction in diet it is im- 

 portant to emphasize the character of the foods eaten as well as the 

 amount of reduction. It should be stated at the outset that we hold 

 no thesis for any particular types of food, dietetic peculiarities, or 

 regime. Consequently we believed that the most logical method of 

 studying this problem was to give the men, so far as the character of 

 food was concerned, as great a variety as they would normally receive 

 were they not on diet. Throughout the entire test, therefore, with 

 but very few exceptions, the subjects received regular college mess-hall 

 food. The exceptions were the substitution of grape or apple jelly 

 for butter during certain periods of excessive reduction, and the 

 addition of rather considerable amounts of spinach and bulky food 

 materials that would not commonly be received in the diet. The 

 food was well prepared and served at a special table, but undoubtedly 

 the presence of others consuming liberal amounts of food was dis- 

 turbing psychologically. The members of the squad frequently 

 indicated that this was a true disturbance. 



Since with Squad B the diet restriction amounted to practically 

 two-thirds of the normal intake, that is, the normal intake of approxi- 

 mately 4,000 calories w^as reduced to approximately 1,500 calories, 

 it became necessary to be sure that no vital food accessories or none 

 of the unidentified dietary factors were omitted. Typical menus cov- 

 ering several days were therefore submitted to Dr. E. V. McCollum, 

 of the Johns Hopkins University, who was kind enough to inspect 

 them and reported that, in his judgment, there was no deficiency in 

 unidentified dietary factors. One difficulty arose in that this reduced 

 diet had a tendency to produce constipation in many cases. This was 

 counteracted by a rather liberal use of bran. At first, admittedly too 

 hberal use was made of the bran until it was realized that an appreciable 

 proportion of the total daily calories was being suppHed by this 

 material. Subsequently the bran was used in moderation by practi- 

 cally all of the subjects. In addition, bran biscuits, bran muffins, 

 and some patent bran preparations were used, which made it possible 

 to control the constipation without much diflSculty. 



At the beginning of the test the Woods Hall dietary included butter; 

 this was later replaced with nut margarine; finally, to reduce 

 the caloric intake and still provide something to eat with bread, the 

 subjects were given jelly as a substitute. 



Since we had no predilection for either a high or low protein diet, 

 we gave no attention to the nitrogen intake, at least at the beginning, 

 but simply curtailed the caloric intake in general by serving one-half 

 to one-third of the regular portions. Obviously this procedure auto- 

 matically resulted in a curtailment of the nitrogen intake. But the 

 fact should be emphasized that these diets were, so far as character is 



