DIETETICS. 103 



fulfill these requirements, to compute, from the market prices of 

 foods, how much it should take per diem for an individual, or a 

 family of individuals, to live healthfully and economically. The 

 day will surely come when, through the medium of schools and 

 the press, everyone will know what we may call the fundamentals 

 of dietetics, namely: (1) that a man of sedentary occupation 

 (the ordinary city clerk) requires daily 2,600 calories, and a 

 laboring man, at least 3,000 calories. (2) That at least 5 per 

 cent of the calories should be provided in protein food of animal 

 origin (meats, milk) with 10 per cent or more as other protein 

 (bread, oatmeal, etc.). 



To enable the housewife to purvey the necessary food to meet 

 these requirements, she must therefore become familiar with the 

 calorie value and the percentage of protein in the different 

 classes of protein foods, and of the calorie values of other great 

 staples of diet. Canned foods will no doubt some day have 

 printed on the label : ' ' This can contains .... calories, of which 



.... per cent are in proteins of grade " And this is no 



Utopian idea; it is practical common sense. The adoption of 

 such a scheme is far more likely to be the solution of the problem 

 of the high cost of living than anything else, for, indeed, it is not 

 so much the high cost of living as it is the cost of high living 

 that troubles us. We demand business efficiency in our manufac- 

 turing organizations, and yet we are inclined to ridicule as im- 

 practical any attempts at nutritive efficiency in the animal organ- 

 ization, which is our own body. Not only the principles of 

 dietetics, but the details as well are now so thoroughly under- 

 stood that their application in the feeding of the masses is only 

 a matter of education. Dietery impostures of the meanest de- 

 scription, often hiding behind a "bluff" of scientific knowledge, 

 are of course the most serious enemies we shall have to face in 

 spreading the knowledge. It will be the duty of physicians, of 

 dentists, and of the educated classes to offset this commercial 

 brigandage by spreading the gospel of food efficiency. 



As illustrating the food efficiency, in relationship to cost we 

 may take the following table from the menu of a well-known 

 restaurant company: 



