American Association. 35 
States are a marked exception. Many, even among 
those who really desire to ecunomize, use needlessly ex- 
pensive kinds of food. They endeavor to make their diet 
attractive by paying high prices rather than by skillfully 
cooking and tastefully serving. Then, too, they are more 
wasteful than any other nation. An inexplicable sensitive- 
ness upon this point exists among American workmen. The 
best the market affords alone is good enough for them, and 
by their constant demand for what they wrongly consider 
the choice cuts of meat, they maintain the present high 
prices. Improper eating, especially over-eating, is a 
source of disease more than any other one thing; the eating 
habit does more harm to health than even the drinking 
habit. The remedy lies in persuading people that economy 
is respectable, and in teaching them how to economize. 
Prof. William H. Brewer, of New Haven, regretted that 
the lecturer had not recommended the forms of food to be 
substituted for more expensive ones of no more nutritive 
power. He believed that foods rich in protein and carbo- 
hydrates had not only a more beneficial effect upon the 
physical conditions of the people, but exerted beneficial in- 
fluences as well over their morals. 
Prof. Ordway, of New Orleans, thought Americans did 
not really consume so much more than Kuropeans as the 
lecturer inferred. Waste mostly explained the apparent 
difference. 
At the Afternoon Session, the hall was again filled 
with an audience which appreciated the importance 
of the discussion, though some of them did not agree 
with the lecturer’s propositions. “Statistics of dieta- 
ries of considerable numbers of Americans,” said Prof. 
Atwater, “mostly of the working classes, show that their 
food is large in amount, and includes large proportions of 
meat. French-Canadians at home, consume three and a 
half pounds of food per day. On going to Massachusetts 
factories, their quantity of food is increased to five pounds. 
Other American factory operatives, mechanics, and laboring 
people, native and foreign, averaged a little more—in some 
cases seven pounds, Chemical examination of the dietaries, 
a 
