Excess in eating is often due to the use of certain concentrated foods. A teaspoonful of olive oil contains forty calories; the ordinary pat of butter (one fourth ounce), fifty calories; a heaping teaspoonful of sugar, forty calories; one English walnut, thirty-three calories; a fair sized olive, twenty calories. While these are good foods, they should be eaten with due regard for their high energy value, that the proper food balance be not disturbed. After eating a good square meal, the average individual calls for the dessert, which, with its accompaniments, actually constitutes a second meal; as, for example, a serving of pie, three hundred fifty calories; its cheese accompaniment, another one hundred calories; a few stuffed dates, another one hundred calories; a few nuts and raisins and a cup of chocolate bringing the total value of this second meal forced upon the body up to seven hundred or eight hundred calories. Vegetables of themselves are low in caloric value, their importance being due to the cellulose, salts, and vitamines they contain. But they are usually prepared with so much butter or cream that as served they have a high caloric value in fat. Lean meat is practically pure protein, and the tendency of the meat eater is to get an excess of this element. The vegetarian often goes to the other extreme, his diet showing a deficiency in protein, with an excess of fats and carbohydrates. That the protein balance be kept normal is an important matter, for a person may at one and the same time be suffering from the results of a deficient diet and also from the effects of overeating. The protein needed daily is from ten to thirteen per cent of the total ration. If the total daily ration is but one thousand five hundred calories, the protein should still be two hundred calories, and therefore thirteen per cent of the total. Thus if a person is living on foods containing less than ten per cent, there is danger of not getting enough of this important element. Much of the food eaten is less than ten per cent protein, because of the addition to it of fat and sugar in large amounts. So-called meat substitutes should be high in the percentage of protein, in order to make up for the butter, sugar, oils, olives, desserts, fruits, and other very low protein foods that enter so largely into one's dietary. The question has been asked, Why object to the addition of fat to a meat substance, since it does not actually reduce the quantity of protein, though it does relatively? In reply, it may be said that the relative reduction makes necessary an excess of the nonnitrogenous foods, to get enough protein; and even though one's capacity should receive it comfortably, still the objection to the excess aliment remains.