DIETETICS. 819 



familiar articles of food would be necessary, if taken alone, to supply 

 the requisite daily amount of proteid or non-proteid food ; his esti- 

 mates are based upon the percentage composition of the foods and 

 upon experimental data snowing the extent of absorption of the 

 foodstuffs in each food. In this table he supposes that the daily 

 diet should contain 110 gms. of proteid=17.5 gms. of N, and non- 

 proteids sufficient to contain 270 gms. of C: 



For 110 Gms. Proteid 

 (17.5 Gms. N). 



Milk 2900 gms. 



Meat (lean) 540 " 



Hen's eggs 18 eggs. 



Wheat flour 800 gms. 



Wheat bread 1650 " 



Rye bread 1900 " 



Rice 1870 " 



Corn 990 " 



Peas 520 " 



Potatoes 4500 " 



As Munk points out, this table shows that any single food, if taken 

 in quantities sufficient to supply the nitrogen, would give too much 

 or too little carbon and the reverse; those animal foods which, in 

 certain amounts, supply the nitrogen needed furnish only from one- 

 fourth to two-thirds of the necessary amount of carbon. To live 

 for a stated period upon a single article of food a diet sometimes 

 recommended to reduce obesity means, then, an insufficient quan- 

 tity of either nitrogen or carbon and a consequent loss of body 

 weight. Such a method of dieting amounts practically to a partial 

 starvation. In practical dieting we are accustomed to get our 

 supply of proteids, fats, and carbohydrates from both vegetable 

 and animal foods. To illustrate this fact by an actual case, in 

 which the food was carefully analyzed, an experimenter weighing 

 67 kgms. records that he kept himself in nitrogen equilibrium upon 

 a diet in which the proteid was distributed as follows: 



For a person in health and leading an active, normal life, appetite 

 and experience seem to be safe and sufficient guides by which to 

 control the diet; but in conditions of disease, in regulating the diet 

 of children and of collections of individuals, scientific dieting, if one 

 may use the phrase, has accomplished much, and will be of greater 

 service as our knowledge of the physiology of nutrition increases. 



