CHEMISTRY AND ECONOMY OF FOOD 

 BY HENRY C. SHERMAN, PH.D. 



Professor of Food Chemistry and Executive Officer oj ike 

 Department of Chemistry, Columbia University 



HALF of the struggle of life is a struggle for food" 

 in the sense that a majority of the world's 

 people must spend as much of their time or 

 their earnings in providing themselves with adequate 

 food as with all other necessities combined. 



THE COST AND THE FUNCTIONS OF FOOD. A family 

 in comfortable circumstances may spend as much for 

 rent, sometimes (too often perhaps) as much for cloth- 

 ing, as for food. The food is more nearly a fixed re- 

 quirement than are the other items of the cost of living. 

 When we consider the larger numbers of families who 

 must live on smaller incomes we find that while the ex- 

 penditures for food average somewhat less than in well- 

 to-do families of the same size, yet in general it is not 

 feasible to diminish the expenditure for food in the same 

 proportion that the income is diminished. Thus the 

 smaller the income the larger the proportion of it that 

 goes for food. In the typical family of a labouring man 

 or minor clerk half of the entire income is often spent 

 for food and must be if the health and efficiency of the 

 family are to be maintained. Or as one writer puts it: 



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