1905-6.] Miss T. D. Cameron on A Dietary Study. 331 
These standard dietaries are constructed to represent the 
requirements of an average man doing a moderate amount of 
muscular work. The amount required varies with the work done, 
with sex, age, weight, and climate. Personal idiosyncrasy in the 
matter of food is also a matter of common knowledge. Atwater 
gives a woman’s requirements in food as 0*8 of a man at moderate 
labour. A boy of 14-16 years of age requires the same amount as 
a woman; a girl of 14-16 is regarded as requiring 0*7 of a man. 
A child under 2 years requires 0'3 of a man. Atwater derived 
these factors from Camerer’s * work on energy requirements per 
unit of work at different ages. Konig gives practically the same 
ratio in suggesting 118 grammes of proteid, 56 of fat, and 500 of 
carbohydrate for a man ; and 92 grammes of proteid, 44 fat, and 
400 carbohydrate for a woman. 
It is important to note that, in these estimates, no allowance is 
made for differences in the digestibility and absorbability of 
different kinds of food. 
II. Previous Dietary Studies. 
Many studies of the actual diet consumed by different classes 
have been made both in America and in Europe. Atwater and 
his co-workers in America have investigated the dietary of 
different classes in the United States, and they have collected a 
large number of similar studies. These, of course, do not touch 
the question of the desirability or necessity for the ingestion of 
food in such quantities or in these nutritive proportions. 
Atwater did certainly suggest a standard, as has been already 
stated. But his dietary results are simply presented as the 
actual food on which the people live and work. They are taken 
as fairly representative of different classes of the community, of 
various social grades, with different customs as regards food. No 
doubt, the amount of food taken is largely the result of habit ; 
but it must, to some extent, be founded on what experience has 
taught. Atwater f emphasises the fact that Americans eat more 
than people of the same social position in Europe. This applies 
especially to the working classes, and he explains on this ground 
* Vierodt’s Daten u. Tabellen, 1888, p. 7. 
t “ Foods, Nutritive Yalue and Cost,” Farmer’s Bulletin , 23. 
