578 Journal of Agricultural Research vol. vi.No. 16 



fails to digest as thoroughly as other meats, with the result that it is 

 either harmful or undesirable as food. That this opinion does not rest 

 on general experience is indicated by the contrary belief in Europe, 

 which ranks veal as a particularly desirable meat, even for invalids, and 

 which regards very young veal much as it does young pig and young 

 lamb. 



The question of its dietary value and its digestibility, both in the more 

 popular as well as in the technical sense, thus becomes one worthy of 

 study for itself and for its bearing upon the common prejudice against 

 the use of young veal as well as upon the related matter of wholesome- 

 ness when this food is eaten in comparison with more commonly accepted 

 foods, and accordingly the tests here reported were undertaken. 



PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS 



In the literature consulted empirical conclusions are not uniform and 

 very little definite information has been found regarding the food value 

 and possible use in the diet of very young veal. 



Studies have been made, however, to determine what the difference 

 is, chemically or otherwise, between very young veal and the older 

 market veal. Fish (4), 1 for instance, conducted such an investigation, 

 with the object of obtaining data which would enable him to determine 

 the relative age of the animal in market, so that the very young could 

 be detected. He determined the specific gravity and freezing point of 

 the tissue juice and also the percentage of water, finding that in very 

 young veal, where more water is present in the tissues, there is less depres- 

 sion of the freezing point and a lower specific gravity. In continuation 

 of this work, the same author (5) made dietary studies to determine 

 whether the flesh of the young calf from 1 to 14 days of age exerts any 

 injurious effects upon the consumer. Seven families, including over 20 

 individuals from 2 to 60 years of age, ate this meat and reported no 

 physiological disturbances, the health of each remaining apparently 

 normal. Later, the results of experiments in vitro led Fish (6) to con- 

 clude that the difference in the thoroughness of digestibility of the tissues 

 of very young and market veal is so small as to be practically negligible. 



Very recently Berg (3) has reported the experimental data of a bio- 

 chemical comparison of beef and immature veal in which he discusses 

 the chemical composition, digestion in vitro, and results of feeding ex- 

 periments made with animals (cats) in the laboratory. He concludes that 

 there are no physiologically significant differences in the chemical com- 

 position of beef and immature veal. In a large number of artificial 

 digestion experiments he found that immature veal was as quickly 

 digested as beef. In the feeding experiments with cats, immature 

 veal supplied all of the nitrogen and a large share of the energy of the 



1 Reference is made by number to " Literature cited," p. 587-588. 



