Nutritional Principles in Wartime Food Problems H . C. S H E R M A N , Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, N e w York, Ν . Υ . IN THE long run no one can spend any significantly larger amount of energy than he receives from his food. T h e aver age reasonably active man, eats and spends somewhere around 3,000 calories a. day. If he spends more or eats less, the differ ence can be met for a longer or shorter time by burning the fuel he had previously stored in his body as glycogen a n d fat. When that is gone he is obliged to b e less active, lest he burn up so much of h i s own body substance as to be weakened b y emaciation. This forced lessening of a c tivity, when prolonged, leads to the chronic apathy that is so serious a, characteristic of a starving population. Specificity of Nutritional Needs All living things must spend energy and so must have fuel food; but every species has its nutritional need of certain specific chemical elements and compounds. I n the case of our own species, somewhere around 40 such factors are needed i n nor mal nutrition. These needed nutritional factors are specific in two senses. Each i s independently needed, to perform i t s own functions which nothing else can, and these nutrients are all needed by every member of the species, and in about the same amounts relative to age, activity, a n d bod ily size. However, we do not need to make sepa rate dietary or food supply calculations as to every one of these 40 or so nutri tional factors. The National Research Council's table of "Recommended A l lowances for Specific Nutrients" includes 10 of them with the assumption t h a t food supplies satisfactory with respect to all these ten—calories, protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A value, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamins C and D—may b e trusted to supply the other nutritional needs without further planning. N o w this N . R . C . yardstick, or a n y such fixed summary of quantitative nutritional needs, should be viewed in the light of t h e principle of nutritional flexibility. Nutritional Flexibility Now that science has progressed t o where the physicists themselves find machine-model analogies inadequate, w e , in dealing with the chemistry of t h e nutri tion processes, will best not think o f these principles as analogous to parts of a ma chine or of a machine process, but rather as analogous t o overlapping, and t o some extent interacting or mutually modifying, fields-of-force. A few illustrations may indicate the i m
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portance of these nutritional principles as guides in the practical problems of food management. A prominent wartime problem is, How far and a t what cost can the human body adjust itself t o shortage of total food (calories)? During World War I, Benedict and co workers (1) experimented with healthy young men, under well-controlled condi tions, as t o the possibilities of sustained human health and activity with substan tially reduced food consumption. T h e die tary was well balanced but its amount was -markedly reduced until 10 to 1 2 % of the initial body weight had been lost, after which the food restriction was such as to hold the reduced body weight about con stant, the men living essentially the same mental and physical lives as before. Under these conditions, the combined effect of lowered body weight and lessened basal energy metabolism per unit of weight was such that the men lived on about twothirds the usual allowance of total food calories. The lowered basal energy metab olism doubtless means some lowering of muscle tone, but the only detectable physiological cost of this adaptation of the body to a more economical use of food was a rather intangible lessening of animal spirits. I n all tests applied, efficiency was well maintained. Somewhere between this two-thirds normal level of energy metabolism and the level only half as high as this (on which some victims of the war have been forced to live), the further ef fort of the body to reduce its energy out put to meet the drastically inadequate intake results (when long continued) in the general apathy which has been found apparently extending to the brain as well as the muscles. Now let us turn to the case of protein. A high degree of potential flexibility has long been known to characterize the quan titative aspect of protein metabolism. The protein-sparing action of carbohydrates, featured in textbooks for nearly 40 years, need be but barely mentioned. Recently developed and emphasized b y Youmans (4) is the extremely important medical finding that "the total caloric intake has an exceedingly important bearing on the adequacy of the protein supply. With a high-calorie diet the protein intake may be reduced safely to a very low level." With this in mind, and remembering the protein and energy values of breadstuffs and pota toes, we see that these direct food crops can go a long way toward solving any possible problem of our protein supply.
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As an example from the vitamin field, under some conditions a high intake of riboflavin helps the body to cope with a shortage of thiamine. Obviously, different chemical mecha nisms are involved in these three examples of nutritional flexibility. On the practical side, body reserves or ability of the body to coast over reasonable periods of short age, one nutrient sometimes pinch-hitting for another to some extent, will enable scientifically guided food management to make fuller use of a given food commodity when abundant, and in case of rationing allow more scope for the judgment and preferences of individual consumers, than a too mechanical yardstick or predeter mined allocation budget would allow. This scientifically supported flexibility has greatly facilitated the administration of rationing of meats and fats in the United States. Foods as Commodities. Prewar, we were almost without foreign markets for food, and were geared to balance produc tion and home consumption. Then came the occasion to help feed the British people, and, soon afterward, a part of the Russian army. At the same time the manufacture of munitions meant fuller employment and increased purchasing power for a large proportion of our lowincome families, thus increasing theireffective demands in the food markets. Food production, which had been increas ing somewhat slowly in the late thirties, was intensified with the result that in 1943 for the seventh year in succession Ameri can agriculture broke all its previous rec ords in total food production. Without very exceptionally favorable weather, not much further general increase could be expected under wartime handicaps of shortage of manpower and machinery. Hence there was need to plan adjustments in the use of food-production resources to meet the demands that wartime conditions were especially accentuating. Meats and fats were especially desired both b y our Allies and by the large segment of our population now enjoying substantial in creases over their previously low incomes, as well as by our rapidly growing Army and Navy. What now are our outstanding food commodity problems? The fat situation was, for a time, acute because fat is a direct munition of war as well as a food of great importance to war workers and the Armed Forces, and with our needs increasing, Japan was cutting
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off our chief foreign supplies. T h e quickest way to increase our home production of fat was by intensified feeding of grain to hogs, at the same time raising more hogs to be fattened. This was encouraged by the Government, and the farmers responded so far beyond expectation that for a while the swine population of the United States was growing ten times as fast as either the milk-cow or t h e human population. But the fattening of so many hogs was depleting the country's reserve of grain at an unduly rapid rate. Fortunately, the Government had also encouraged increased plantings of oilseed crops, especially soybeans and peanuts. Our domestic production of fat from soybeans and peanuts was thus so largely increased as to render us much less dependent upon lard. By the middle of 1943 it was becoming apparent that conversion of corn into meat and eggs had been so attractive financially as to monopolize too much of the corn crop and so cause real shortages of corn for dairy cattle feeding, and even (for a time, in the South) had interrupted the supply depended upon for direct use as human food. For these and other reasons, the Government in its food-production goals for 1944 (5) and the National Research Council {2) advised, among other things: (1) that increased prominence be given in the American dietary to locally grown fruits and vegetables and t o the forms of milk that include its nonfat solids; (2) that b y virtue of a moderate shift in that direction substantial amounts of foods better fitted for shipment and stockpiling, such as breadstuffs, meats, and fats, can be sent overseas; and (3) that the feeding of grain to meat animals be moderated, so that more grain may b e available for milk production while always maintaining safe reserves of grain for use as human food. One encounters no substantial difference of view as to the desirability and practicability of such adjustments in the mild degrees in which they are proposed. B u t some people seem to think of ' them as strictly war-emergency measures to disappear in toto as soon as the armies cease firing, while others see something of permanent value for the more scientific management of our food-production resources in peacetime a s well. In the light of our experience of 1943 and 1944 in handling by scientific management a food situation which would otherwise have become a crisis, i t is t o be hoped that we m a y continue t o see the importance of guiding our food habits in accordance with nutritional principles. Secretary Wickard's saying that "food will win the war and write t h e peace" m a y prove even more prophetic than a t first appeared. Cultivation of Food Habits T h e principle of t h e cultivation of food habits that promote equity and eood will, through such economic use of iood-pro-
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duction resources as to spread nutritional benefits more widely, belongs at once t o the science of nutrition itself and to its human implications both for the war and the peace. T h e far-reaching recent advances of nutritional knowledge which show that food can bring unexpectedly constructive benefit to health and efficiency, trie spread of this knowledge both at home a n d abroad, and the experience of the United Nations in making common cause in this and other fields, have combined to put us in a position of special opportunity and responsibility—what the late Dr. Mendel called the scientists' noblesse oblige. While giving ourselves full benefit of all our nutritional knowledge, we can at t h e same t i m e so adjust our food habits as t o help m a k e these benefits more fully available both to our lower-income fellow citizens and t o the less richly endowed among the United Nations. Literature Cited (1) Benedict, F. G., Miles, W. R., Roth P., and Smith, H. M., "Human Vitality and Efficiency under Prolonged Restricted Diet", Publication 280, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919 (2) Natl. Research Council, "How We Can Share Our Food and Maintain Good Nutrition at Home", Washington, D. C , 1944. (3) U. S. Dept. Agr., Secretary's Annual Report 1943; Food Program for 1944, War Food Administration. (4) Younaans, J. B., "Nutritional- Deficiencies", pp. 231, 237-8, Philadelphia, J. 3B. Lippincott Co., 1941. PRÉSENTE» before the Division of Biological Chemistry at the 108th Meeting of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETT, New York, Ν. Υ.
National Association of Insecticide Manufacturers The 31st meeting of the National Asso ciation of Insecticide and Disinfectant Manu facturers -will be held in the Hotel Roosevelt, New York City, December 4 and 5, 1944. At the opening session, following the ad dress of President Henry A. Nelson, M. H. Solworth, Joseph E . Seagram &, Sons, will speak on. "Changing Concepts of Sanitation within Industry", and reports of the Legisla tive and Disinfectant Scientific Committees will be presented. At the afternoon session on Dec. 4 , at which N. J. Gothard will pre side, Paul A. Neal, U. S. Public Health Service,will speak on "Toxicology of D D T " ; J. A. Nessemann, D u Pont Co., on " D D T Up to Date"; Paul A. Wolf, Dow Chemical Co., on "ABC's in the Formulation of Phenolic Disinfectants"; and Brigadier General Joseph P. Battley, Deputy Chief of Staff, U- S. Army Service Forces, will deliver an address. I n addition, the reports of the Insecticide Scientific, Sanitary Specialties Marketing, and Executive Committees will be presented. The Tuesday morning session, presided over b y Gordon M. Baird, will feature a Symposium on the Washington Picture, at which tlie speakers will be chiefs of sections, administrators of orders, from the War Pro
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duction Board and Office of Price Adminis tration, and N.A.I.D.M. Washington rep resentative. Addresses will include "Some Ideas on Modern Postwar Packaging", by Donald Deskey, Donald Deskey Associates; "Revision of Insecticide Act of 1910", by C. C. McDonnell, War Food Administration; and "Research on Walkway Surfaces", by J. A. Dickinson, National Bureau of Stand ards. Afternoon talks are: "Synthetic and Semisynthetic Nutrient Media for Use in Testing Disinfectants and Antiseptics", E. G. Klarmann, Lehn & Fink; "Our FarFlung Battlefronts", Major George Fielding Eliot; and "Repellents and Their Uses in the Armed Forces", W. E. Dove, Bureau of En tomology and Plant Quarantine, Agricultural Research Administration.
Presentation of Chemical Industry M e d a l to Bradley Dewey The Chemical Industry Medal for 1944 was presented Nov. 10 to Colonel Bradley Dewey, president of Dewey & Almy Chemi cal Co., Boston, Mass., and former Rubber Director, at a joint meeting of the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry, the New York Section of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, and the New York Sec
tion of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, held at the Hotel Roosevelt, New York. The chairman of the American Sec tion of the society, Norman A. Shepard, pre sided. Charles Almy, vice president of Dewey & Almy, spoke about the personal side of the medalist's life, Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institition of Washington told of Colonel Dewey's scientific and technical accomplishments, and Karl T. Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology addressed the meeting on the medalist's part in educational matters. The medal, which may be awarded annually for valuable application of chemical research to industry was presented to Colonel Dewey in recognition of his work in colloid, chemistry, especially as pertaining to rubber latex, and his accomplishments in administering the synthetic rubber program during the critical war period. The presentation was made by Foster Dee Snell, following which Colonel Dewey gave an address on "The Role oi Orga nized Research and Business in American National Defense". Colonel Dewey not only told of the achievements of men in organized research and in big business in the rubber program, but also emphasized their importance in other vital programs of process industry and in the building of the new weapons which have already determined the course of de cisive battles. He urged that research and businessmen recognize the irreplaceable value to national defense of teams of scientists, engineers, production men, and business executives and stated that he believed these men protect the country against meddling by unscrupulous theorists who seek to arouse a popular prejudice by harping on the dangers of technological unemployment and who would emasculate the patent system. Although a small businessman himself, Dewey spoke out for the essential value of big business and its organized research in any future war effort.
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