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upper limit is the amount of food that his digestive tract can 

 handle. The range between these two extremes is narrower 

 than most folks realize. 



A certain amount of food is essential. If it is not supplied 

 in one form, it must be obtained in another or life will cease. 

 On the other hand, there are rather definite upper limits to 

 the amount of food that can be eaten. The human stomach 

 holds about three pints, and food moves through the ali- 

 mentary canal at the rate of about six inches per hour. An 

 effort to overload the stomach results merely in indigestion. 



Bread the Staff of Life 



The American picks over almost one ton of food a year. 

 Over half of this is water in one form or another; he eats 

 about 680 pounds of dry matter. Grains represent 41 per cent 

 of the total dry matter (table 1). Twenty- three per cent of 

 the dry matter of the diet is represented by the highly prized 

 meats and dairy and poultry products. Agitation regarding 

 the food shortage in the spring of 1943 was concerned mainly 

 with these highly prized foods. 



Grain represents about 88 per cent of the Chinese diet, 

 whereas it represents about 40 per cent of ours. Bread is truly 

 the staff of life, though the American consumer leans upon 

 it less heavily than do the consumers of other lands. The so- 

 called highly prized foods, meat, eggs, and dairy products, 

 represent only 1 per cent of the Chinese diet, compared with 

 23 per cent for the American. 



Do We Eat to Live or Live to Eat? 



If we ate merely to live, we would figure out a scientific 

 diet, as a farmer does for his hogs and cattle, and stick to 

 it. Competition forces the farmer to see to it that his ani- 

 mals eat to live rather than live to eat. The preparing of at- 

 tractive dishes, variations in the diet, and the selection of 



