|
| or woman at moderately | | | | |
| active work | 92 | .. | .. | 2700 |
| Woman at light muscular | | | | |
| work, or man without | | | | |
| muscular exercise | 83 | .. | .. | 2450 |
| | | | | |
+---------------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+

8. _Hygienic Economy of Food._--For people in good health, there are two
important rules to be observed in the regulation of the diet. One is to
choose the foods that "agree" with them, and to avoid those which they
cannot digest and assimilate without harm; and the other is to use such
sorts and quantities of foods as will supply the kinds and amounts of
nutrients needed by the body and yet to avoid burdening it with
superfluous material to be disposed of at the cost of health and
strength.

As for the first-mentioned rule, it is practically impossible to give
information that may be of more than general application. There are
people who, because of some individual peculiarity, cannot use foods
which for people in general are wholesome and nutritious. Some persons
cannot endure milk, others suffer if they eat eggs, others have to
eschew certain kinds of meat, or are made uncomfortable by fruit; but
such cases are exceptions. Very little is known regarding the cause of
these conditions. It is possible that in the metabolic processes to
which the ingredients of the food are subjected in the body, or even
during digestion before the substances are actually taken into the body,
compounds may be formed that are in one way or another injurious.
Whatever the cause may be, it is literally true in this sense that "what
is one man's meat is another man's poison," and each must learn for
himself what foods "agree" with him and what ones do not. But for the
great majority of people in health, suitable combinations of the
ordinary sorts of wholesome food materials make a healthful diet. On the
other hand, some foods are of particular value at times, aside from
their use for nourishment. Fruits and green vegetables often benefit
people greatly, not as nutriment merely, for they may have very little
actual nutritive material, but because of fruit or vegetable acids or
other substances which they contain, and which sometimes serve a most