86 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Through ingeniously devised experiments physiologists have 

 attempted to ascertain the amount of nutrition which a normal man 

 requires when engaged in different kinds of work. It is customary to 

 express this as so many calories of heat energy, including so many 

 grams of the indispensable protein, or tissue-building compounds. 

 The daily allowance made for the average man at moderate muscular 

 work by the late Professor Atwater, an American authority in this 

 field of investigation, was 3,500 calories, including at least 125 grams 

 of protein compounds. Men at hard labor and athletes in training 

 require more, while brain workers appear to require somewhat less. 



Having established a standard, the next step is to analyze differ- 

 ent kinds of food to ascertain their nutritive value. Economical 

 consumption is secured when the cheapest combination of foods con- 

 taining the required ingredients, and both palatable and digestible for 

 the given consumer, is selected. No general rules can be laid down, 

 because of differences in the tastes and incomes of the different con- 

 sumers, but it is interesting to note the relation in which the food 

 values of different foods stand to their cost. Professor Atwater drew 

 up a table giving the quantity of each of several kinds of food which 

 might have been purchased for ten cents on a given day in New York 

 City, and the amount of nutrition which each contained. From this 

 it appears that, from the point of view of protein contents, the most 

 economical foods were preparations of wheat, corn, beans, oatmeal, 

 beef for stewing, and salt cod, while, from the point of view of poten- 

 tial heat energy, the most economical were wheat flour, cornmeal, 

 oatmeal, potatoes, beans, salt pork, and sugar. The table seems on 

 the whole to bear out the common impressions that a vegetable diet 

 is much more economical than a diet consisting largely of meat, and 

 that the cereals, wheat, corn, beans, and oats, are the most economical 

 of the vegetables. While the results of Professor Atwater's investi- 

 gations are highly suggestive, his conclusions are not universally 

 accepted. More recent experiments have shown that a smaller 

 amount of food, fully masticated, will maintain a man in fullest vigor. 

 The difficulty of standardizing methods of cooking and of eating 

 both very important makes absolutely precise conclusions in this 

 field unattainable. 



The subject of consumption may be looked at economically in 

 two different ways. The more familiar way is to regard it as the goal of 

 economic activity and to show how the desire for goods causes them to 

 have value and price and induces people to engage in industrial pur- 



