Whatever views may be held as to the amount of proteid food that is necessary for adults, it is not disputed that in the case of children the more expensive forms are necessary because the growth of the body depends entirely upon the proteids. "It is impossible," declares the School Medical Officer of the London County Council, "to cut down proteids to the same extent in children as in adults without serious results.... To set out, therefore, to relieve underfeeding by a single meal a day, it is necessary to concentrate attention upon proteids and fats ... and, therefore, a dinner for necessitous children must be necessarily more costly than for those properly fed in institutions or in their own homes. The want of clothing, which often accompanies underfeeding, also necessitates more expensive feeding in relief, the loss of bodily heat to be made up being greater than in the case of the child in an industrial school or workhouse, who is warmly clad, and who, moreover, spends much time in a properly heated playroom or dormitory."[238] Footnote 238: London County Council, Report of the Medical Officer (Education) to Sub-Committee on Underfed Children, 1909. See also "School Feeding," by Dr. John Lambert, in _Medical Examination of Schools and Scholars_, edited by T. N. Kelynack, M.D., 1910, pp. 240-242. Few Local Authorities have so planned their dietary as to contain this excess of proteid and fat over starchy food. "Judged by this standard," declared Dr. Kerr in 1908, and the same statement holds good to-day, "most diets supplied by public funds are probably wanting in value for the children, however useful they might be as a single meal for a normal individual."[239] Footnote 239: Report of the Education Committee of the London County Council, submitting report of the Medical Officer (Education) for the twenty-one months ending December 31, 1908, p. 17. It would naturally be expected that the School Medical Officer would be consulted about the dietary as a matter of course,[240] but this is by no means invariably the case. At Birkenhead, for instance, the School Medical Officer has no voice in the planning of the menu. At Stoke-on-Trent the School Medical Officer reports in 1911 that, "with the exception of the Fenton district, the medical staff does not appear to have even been consulted on the matter of dietary."[241] Footnote 240: "The determination of the dietary of the children generally, and of individual children whose health or age renders it desirable that special arrangements should be made in their case" is, as the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education points out, a matter "on which the School Medical Officer is particularly competent to form an opinion, and on which, therefore, his opinion should be sought by the Authority." (Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education for 1911, p. 275.) Footnote 241: