I44 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
IN HOW FAR ARE DIETARY STANDARDS TO BE FOLLOWED? 
A dietary standard is an indication, nota rule. It is an at- 
tempt to express an average demand for people of a class, not 
a regimen for any given individual. It is at best an estimate 
with little claim to accuracy. And even if it be accurate for a 
given individual, it does not follow that that individual should 
regulate his diet for each day by the standard. 
A dietary standard cannot be a rule because, in the first 
place, no physiologist to-day knows exactly what is a normal 
or necessary physiological demand for any class of persons, and 
even if future research shall suffice to show the average de- 
mand for a given class, the demand of any given individual of 
the class may vary from the average. ‘The demand to-day may 
be different from that to-morrow or that of summer from that 
of winter, or that for one occupation different from that for an- 
other. On the other hand, as estimates and general indications, 
dietary standards are decidedly useful. 
In another sense a dietary standard is not a rule, that is, it 
need not be followed as a daily regimen. It is not necessary 
that the deposits on a bank account should balance the drafts 
each day, but it is important that they should be nearly equal 
for long periods. It is not necessary that the diet for each day 
should exactly equal the physiological demand of the body for 
nutriment eachday. The body isa storehouse of matter and en- 
ergy. ‘The store is being continually increased and diminished. 
Nature provides for large variations of income and outgo with- 
out harm. But it is important that the income should, on the 
long run, equal the necessary outgo. We need not count the 
grams of protein and calories of energy in our daily food, but 
we should attempt to regulate the kinds and amounts so that 
no large excess of food should be taken, to be either accumu- 
lated in the body or gotten rid of at the expense of health and 
strength, and also that there should be no long-continued def- 
icit to drain the resources of the system. 
One principle, too often forgotten, is that appetite is not 
necessarily the measure of the demand for nutriment. A nor- 
mal appetite might be such a measure, but our appetites are 
not always normal. The habits of modern life, the abundance 
and cheapness of food, the tendency to follow the dictates of 


