850 NUTRITION AND HEAT REGULATION. 



recognized, for special kinds of food. If scientific experiments 

 indicate that this regulatory apparatus leads us to ingest more food 

 than is actually required for the machinery of the body, it remains 

 for observation and experiment to determine whether this excess 

 is beneficial or useless or, perhaps, even harmful. 



Munk gives an interesting table showing how much of certain 

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

 the requisite daily amount of protein or non-protein material; his 

 estimates are based upon the percentage composition of the foods 

 and upon experimental data showing the extent of absorption of the 

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

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

 proteins sufficient to contain 270 gms. of C: 



FOR 110 GMS. PROTEIN ,-, _ A 



(17.5 GMS. N). FOR 27 GMS - u 



Milk 2900 gms. 3800 gms. 



Meat (lean) 540 " 2000 " 



Hen's eggs 18 eggs. 37 eggs. 



Wheat flour 800 gms. 670 gms. 



Wheat bread 1650 



Rye bread 1900 



Rice 1870 



Corn 990 



Peas 520 



Potatoes'. . 4500 



1000 



1100 



750 



660 



750 



2550 



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 proteins, 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 protein was distributed as follows: 



300 gms. meat = 63.08 gms. protein = 9.78 gms. N. 



666.3 c.c. milk = 18.74 " " = 2.905 " " 



100 gms. rice = 7.74 " " = 1.2 " " 



100 " bread = 11.32 " " = 1.755 " " 



500 c.c. wine = 1.17 " " = 0.182 gm. " 



102.05 " = 15.868 gms. 



