PHYSIOLOGY: BENEDICT AND ROTH 
101 
may be looked upon as reasonably accurate indices of the actual basal 
metabolism from which the energy output may be computed. 
In order to study particularly the influence of a vegetarian diet, it 
was necessary to compare these values for vegetarians with those ob- 
tained on non- vegetarians of the same height and weight. A sufficiently 
large number of observations on non-vegetarians, including both men and 
women, was available for a satisfactory comparison of this kind. The 
body weights of the men ranged from 75 kg. to 49.3 kg. and of the 
women from 93.6 kg. to 40.0 kg. A comparison of the heat produc- 
tion per 24 hours as computed from the gaseous exchange showed that 
the men vegetarians produced 25.5 calories per kilogram and the non- 
vegetarian men of like height and weight 26.4 calories. On the commonly 
used, yet questionable, basis of the heat per square meter of body sur- 
face per 24 hours the vegetarians showed 798 calories as compared with 
828 calories for the non- vegetarians. With the women the correspond- 
ing values per kilogram of body weight were 24.6 calories for the vege- 
tarians and 25.0 calories for the non- vegetarians; and per square meter 
of body surface 753 calories for the vegetarians compared with 766 calo- 
ries for the non-vegetarians. 
Believing that the relatively large proportion of carbohydrate sup- 
posedly eaten in the vegetarian diets might tend to a larger storage of 
body glycogen, thus giving available carbohydrate material to be drawn 
upon in the endurance and similar tests of muscular efficiency, a com- 
putation was made in all cases of the respiratory quotient, i.e., the re- 
lationship between the carbon-dioxide production and oxygen con- 
sumption. When the katabolism is exclusively from carbohydrate this 
quotient is 1.0; with pure fat it is 0.70. For the 22 vegetarians (11 men 
and 11 women) the average quotient was found to be 0.83 while the 
average for the 132 non-vegetarians (77 men and 55 women) it was 0.81. 
The mathematical difference between these average respiratory quo- 
tients is too slight to be taken as evidence of a larger glycogen storage. 
The results show, therefore, that the gaseous metaboHc processes of 
the vegetarians are qualitatively and quantitatively essentially those 
of non- vegetarians of similar height and weight with whom they are 
compared. 
The detailed report of this study has been transmitted to the Journal 
of Biological Chemistry, 
