142 + STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
This is not meant to decry dietary standards. It is simply 
a call for more exact information on which to base them. That 
information must be obtained in the ways in which the knowl- 
edge we now have has been gathered, only the methods of 
inquiry must be more thorough and the range more extensive. 
The importance of this subject from the hygienic, economic 
and sociological standpoints is such as to call for much more © 
thorough study than has thus far been devoted to it. 
Such studies should include: 
1. Metabolism experiments. ‘These are usually made with 
one or at most a very few persons, and during périods of a 
few days. The determinations commonly made are amounts 
and composition of food, feces and urine and changes of body 
weight. Such experiments are valuable but they do not show 
the gains and losses of body material other than nitrogen. ‘To 
determine the gains and losses of fats, carbohydrates and water 
the respiration apparatus or better the respiration calorimeter 
is needed. 
One defect of metabolism experiments thus far is that they 
have not been continued long enough with the same individ- 
uals and have not been repeated with large enough. numbers 
of different individuals. This might be done even in respira- * 
tion calorimeter experiments by having persons regularly em- 
ployed as subjects by the year. The amounts and composition 
of food, feces and urine and changes in body weight could be 
determined continuously and the subjects could enter the calo- 
rimeter chamber at regular intervals for experiments of a few 
days each which would indicate more clearly the total change 
of body material under the given regimen of diet and occupa- 
tion, which should be as nearly constant as practicable during 
the whole time. Observations of health, strength, working 
power and general well being could be made. The tests could 
be repeated from year to year with the same and different indi- 
viduals and thus data of value would gradually accumulate. 
It must be remembered that physiological experiments of 
short duration and with few persons do not show what is the 
effect of a given diet, on the long run, upon people generally. 
The information really needed is the permanent effect of diet 
upon health, physical and mental productive power and general 




