Physiological economy in nutrition, with special reference to the minimal proteid requirement of the healthy man: an experimental studyChittenden, R. H. (Russell Henry)
Science
Physiological economy in nutrition, with special reference to the minimal proteid requirement of the healthy man: an experimental study
Chittenden, R. H. (Russell Henry)
Metabolism; Nutrition
Voit’s[27] vegetarian is described by Voit himself as a man twenty-eight
years old, weighing 57 kilos, well nourished, with well developed
muscles, etc. He had lived on a purely vegetable diet for three years,
and was found to be in nitrogenous equilibrium on 8.2 grams of nitrogen.
No mention is made of any disagreeable effects connected with this low
proteid ration, although persisted in for several years. Jaffa’s[28]
experiments and observations on the fruitarians and nutarians of
California “showed in every case (two women and three children) that
though the diet had a low protein and energy value, the subjects were
apparently in excellent health and had been so during the five to eight
years they had been living in this manner.” In comparing the income and
outgo of nitrogen on a diet composed mainly of nuts and fruits, it was
observed in two subjects that 8 grams of nitrogen were sufficient to
bring about nitrogen equilibrium, while with two other subjects on a like
diet the nitrogen required daily for equilibrium was about 10 grams. The
diet used in these experiments, however, was of necessity more or less
restricted in variety, and was without doubt somewhat monotonous. Jaffa
appears to agree with Caspari that the minimum amount of proteid required
daily varies with the individual, and may even vary with the same
individual at different times. Further, Jaffa, in harmony with Siven,
believes that after the body has suffered a loss of nitrogen, there is
at once an effort to attain nitrogenous equilibrium, and that any gain
of nitrogenous body material is a comparatively slow process. If this is
true, it is obvious that the living substance of the tissue protoplasm
must be _slowly_ formed from the proteid of the diet. This, says Jaffa,
should serve as a warning to anyone contemplating any appreciable
decrease in the proteid of the daily diet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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