
STANDARDS FOR RATIONS AND DIETARIES. 219 
But by as much as men and women are of more consequence 
than the animals subdued to their service, by so much is it more 
essential that the physiological demands should be chiefly con- 
sidered in the arrangement of their dietaries. And it must be 
remembered that we are not able to say to-day with any degree 
of exactness just what is the measure of these physiological 
demands. Certain formulas have, indeed, been proposed for 
dietaries of men, women and children. I have ventured to dis- 
cuss them in other places,* and will only say here that there 
seems to me to be the danger of their misuse. The danger is 
the same as in the case of standards for rations for domestic 
animals, namely, that of regarding them in the light of statistics 
and recipes to be blindly followed. 
IN CONCLUSION. 
In view of the interest in the economy of food for man which 
has lately manifested itself and is growing so rapidly, it seems to 
me proper to lay especial emphasis upon the fact that we have 
no dietary standards based upon at all satisfactory physiological 
data. The ones most commonly current are those of Voit and 
his school in Germany. In compiling’these the results of the 
few accurate experiments available at the time were employed, 
but the chief stress was laid upon the observations of the quanti- 
ties of food consumed, in Germany and especially in Bavaria, by 
persons whose conditions of life were such as to lead Voit and 
his followers to assume that their nourishment was normal. It 
is clear, however, that the eating habits of these people and of 
those with whom the more accurate experiments were made, and 
who also lived in Germany, were decided largely by their condi- 
tions. If the same observations and experiments had been made 
in Connecticut instead of Bavaria, it seems reasonably certain 
that the quantities of food consumed would have been much 
larger and the standards for dietaries based upon them would 
have been correspondingly larger than those of Voit and his 
school. It would be an evident mistake to accept these German 
standards as valid for general application. Indeed, there seems 
to me every reason to assume that they represent a scale of living 
decidedly lower than is desirable. 

* See Report of Storrs Station, 1881, pages 144-161; and Bulletin No. 21 of the Office of 
Experiment Stations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on ‘‘ Methods and Results of 
Investigation of the Chemistry and Economy of Food,” pages 141-225. 
