A Nutritional Outlook

The World War served to focus attention in a popular way on the problems of human nutrition to an extent never observed before. The appeal of the United States Food Administration to the nation asserted that all our questions centered in food: its production, its distribution, its use, its conservation. “The more you know about these things,” Mr. Hoover exhorted, “the more valuable you will be and the greater will be your service to humanity.” During our first year as a belligerent (April 1, 1917, to April 1, 1918) we exported fifteen billion pounds of food—an increase of more than 200 per cent over the prewar average. The food shipped was enough to ration completely more than 21,000,000 men, and to supply a considerable surplus of protein-rich foods and fats besides. Much of this surplus was the result of the saving of the American people. This was done in spite of the fact that the estimated total production of the country for the fiscal year, in terms of nutritional units, was from 7 to 10 per cent below the average of the previous years.