THE EFFECT OF VARIABLE PROTEIN AND 



MINERAL INTAKE UPON THE BODY 



COMPOSITION OF THE 



GROWING ANIMAL * 



William M. Wallace, William B. Weil and 

 Anne Taylor 



Department of Pediatrics, Western Reserve University School of 

 Medicine and Babies' and Children'' s Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio 



The quantities of various nutritive substances in the 

 growing body at any given point represent the metabohc 

 integration of the daily additions to the body from the diet 

 from the time of conception. Measurement of the rate or 

 quantity of addition may or may not measure the nutritional 

 requirement for a given substance. Whether it does or not 

 will depend upon the requirement for synthesis and metabolic 

 transformation and upon the possibility of the body being 

 able to store the substance. Thus, the day-by-day accretion 

 of fat or glycogen cannot measure a requirement but the 

 accretion of protein and mineral may do so, once any capacity 

 for storage is exceeded. Information concerning requirements 

 for growth is usually obtained by measurements of external 

 balance for variable periods of time. The information ac- 

 quired concerning the requirements for growth and the com- 

 position of growth by this method is often strangely contra- 

 dictory and always incomplete. Much of the data so ob- 

 tained indicate that extensive storage of dietary components 

 occurs, or that the composition of the body tissues is variable 

 and dependent upon quantity and quality of the intake. 



* This work was supported by grants from the Baker Laboratories, Inc., 

 Cleveland, Ohio and the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases 

 of the National Institutes of Health, United States Public Health Service, 

 Grants numbers G-3754 and A-1032. 



Presented in part at the meeting of the American Pediatric Society, May 

 9-11, 1956, Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. 



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