

STUDIES OF DIETARIES, 193 
DIETARY STUDIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND ELSEWHERE, 
In the Report of this Station for 1892 considerable space was 
devoted to the subjects of food and dietaries. In the Report for 
1892 was ashort chapter on “Economy of Food.” Bulletin No. 7 of 
the Station treated of similar subjects. The favor with which 
these publications have been received has been most encouraging. 
Among the evidences that such inquiry is coming to be regarded 
as most useful, is the fact that the Secretary of Agriculture has 
recommended to Congress an appropriation of $10,000 for the 
study of the subject by the Department of Agriculture in con- 
nection with the experiment stations and otherwise, and that the 
Office of Experiment Stations of that Department has undertaken 
the compilation of results of inquiries in this country and in 
Europe regarding the economy of food. 
In connection with this compilation, which has been placed in 
my charge, I have, with the aid of Drs. H. B. Gibson and C. 
F. Langworthy, endeavored to collate the results of the studies 
of dietaries made in this direction up to the present time. We 
have found records of the examination of 491 Separate dietaries, 
exclusive of army rations. The most of these have been made 
in Europe. The earliest date back to 1851. The majority have 
been made during the past 15 years and by far the larger number 
of the most reliable ones during the past 10 years. The people 
whose dietaries have been studied have been of various classes, 
ages and occupations. A few were in professional life and were 
decidedly well-to-do. The most were wage workers; some of 
these were very poor, but the larger number were in reasonably 
comfortable circumstances as compared with the majority of 
people of like occupation in the countries where they lived. 
From the 491 dietaries we have selected 338 as accurate enough 
to warrant their use in drawing inferences. The number of per- 
sons whose food consumption was observed in each dietary of 
this selected list varied from a single individual to several hun- 
dred. The time of observation in each case was from one to 
thirty days. This list of 338 we have divided in two classes, 
the first including all the studies that seem to us reasonably ac- 
curate and complete; the second including those which are less 
accurate, but sufficiently so to allow their results to be included 
in the general averages. The classification of all these dietaries 
by countries and by completeness of detail is summarized in the 
following tabular statement, ; 
18 
