CHEMISTRY AND FOOD 257 



tural Experiment Station and Professor Lafayette B. 

 Mendel of Yale are the leaders in this field of science 

 and their successful correlation of the chemical differ- 

 ences among proteins with their nutritive functions and 

 efficiencies is one of the great achievements of modern 

 science. Only a hint of it can be given here. When 

 only one protein was fed at a time, along with 

 mixtures of other foodstuffs known to be adequate to 

 all other nutritive requirements, it was found that some 

 proteins are adequate to support normal growth, others 

 support maintenance but little if any growth, while still 

 others always fail even to permit the animal to maintain 

 his weight. A photograph of a rat whose growth had 

 been practically suspended by feeding with a diet good 

 in all other respects but containing gliadin as sole pro- 

 tein is shown in Figure 6 along with photographs, taken 

 at the same focal distance, of normal rats, one of the 

 same age, and another of the same weight, as the rat 

 which had been thus stunted. 



At first thought, therefore, it may seem surprising 

 that the Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission while 

 setting standards for food needs in terms of calories 

 declared it unnecessary to set standards for protein on 

 the ground that a food supply of any ordinary character 

 and sufficiently abundant to meet the calorie (energy) 

 requirement can be trusted to furnish adequate protein 

 without special planning. The justification for this 

 view is found in two facts: (i) the quantities of protein 

 actually required for healthy nutrition have been found 

 by much careful research to be considerably smaller 

 than formerly supposed; (2) the differences in nutritive 



