248 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



"The less the worker gains the more he must invest in 

 food, renouncing of necessity all other .desires/' 

 j Why? What makes it necessary for the majority to 

 renounce so much of what they rightly desire in other 

 directions and spend such large fractions of their slender 

 incomes upon food? 



It is because the functions performed by our food are 

 so urgently and fundamentally necessary not only to 

 our comfort, efficiency, and health, but even to life it- 

 self. Very briefly stated the functions of food are: 

 (i) to yield energy for carrying on the activities of 

 the body; (2) to furnish the materials necessary for the 

 growth and repair or upkeep of the body tissues; (3) to 

 regulate conditions and processes in the body. The 

 most prominent function of food, and the one in which 

 nearly all articles of food take part, is to burn in the 

 body and so yield the energy for the work which is al- 

 ways going on in every living organism even when it is, 

 as we ordinarily speak, at rest. For every act and sign 

 of life involves warmth, movement, or some other form 

 of energy expenditure. 



Fundamental as is the energy requirement or need for 

 calories, yet food requirements cannot be met in terms 

 of calories alone. Our wheat and corn crops alone 

 would furnish each year enough calories for four times 

 our population. But we could not thrive long on grains 

 alone, for they are not entirely satisfactory in the fulfill- 

 ment of the second and third functions of food. While 

 we in America have an unparalleled food resource in 

 our grain crops, we need other food crops also to make 

 our food supply adequate as well as abundant. 



