268 VITALITY AND EFFICIENCY WITH RESTRICTED DIET. 



cent of the total nitrogen and, of still more significance, 10 per cent of 

 the total calories ingested. (See table 32.) 



Table 32. — Computed nitrogen and energy in food of normal group of 12 men, 



Nov. 20 to 24, 1917. 

 [Values per man per day.] 



UNCONTROLLED MEALS. 



Ideally, an experiment such as this should be carried out with every 

 meal controlled. Practically, although we enjoyed the fullest coopera- 

 tion of the subjects, it became psychologically impossible to control 

 every meal throughout the entire period of 4 months. Consequently, 

 the men were allowed an uncontrolled diet on the Sundays following the 

 biweekly experiment in Boston. They were specifically cautioned, 

 however, to control the diet so far as possible and to make reports of 

 what they ate. At the Thanksgiving recess for a few days it again 

 became necessary to allow the men uncontrolled diet. Again, during 

 the Christmas vacation, a number of the men went to their homes. For 

 several of them this was possibly a farewell visit, as they were going 

 into active war service; under the circumstances we could not urge 

 them to remain in Springfield for the holidays. They were, however, 

 requested to curtail the diet in so far as they could and to endeavor to 

 return to Springfield as nearly as possible with no change in body- 

 weight. More than this we could not conscientiously do. Subsequent 

 inspection of the data returned by these men as the record for the 

 uncontrolled meals on Sundays made us regret extremely that we did 

 not urge more strongly the desirability of complete control throughout 

 every meal, even at the sacrifice of shortening the entire experiment. 

 Some of the Sunday meals were excessive in amount in both nitrogen 

 and calorie content. It would seem almost incredible that such quan- 

 tities of food could be eaten without extreme discomfort. In fact, a 

 certain amount of discomfort was produced in a majority of cases. 



An extreme case of an uncontrolled Sunday diet is that given in table 

 33 for Gul on January 13. On this day the food ingestion began with 

 the standard laboratory breakfast, followed by several fight lunches 



