II. 



FOOD CONSERVATION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 

 THE CHEMISTRY OF NUTRITION. 



By H. C. SHERMAN. 

 (Read April 20, 1918.) 



Without repeating the reasons for the present program of food 

 conservation which tends to shift the emphasis of consumption in 

 this country toward the more perishable foods in order that a 

 larger share of our wheat, meat, fats, and sugar may be saved for 

 export to our army and the AlHes, let us consider from the stand- 

 point of the chemistry of nutrition whether such a change in our 

 food habits will involve any sacrifice or rather an improvement in 

 the average American dietary. 



Recent research in nutrition puts us in position to face such 

 problems with more confidence than would have been justified even 

 a few years ago. Until very recently, students of the chemistry of 

 nutrition were in the embarrassing position that rations made up 

 by mixing in the purest forms all the substances known to be neces- 

 sary never proved permanently adequate for the nourishment of ex- 

 perimental animals. With the discovery of food hormones or 

 vitamines, the correlation of chemical structure and nutritive func- 

 tion among the proteins, and the fuller investigation of the role of 

 the inorganic elements, we now believe that everything needed for 

 normal nutrition has been apprehended and can be reckoned with, 

 though in the case of the food hormones or vitamines the chemical 

 identification is not yet complete. 



The quantities of the various nutrients which are needed daily 

 by the body for its normal nutrition have also been studied, with 

 the result that each " requirement " may be stated in more or less 

 definite quantitative terms. Thus the total food requirement (or 

 energy requirement) in calories per man per day; the requirement 



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