Abstract

Experience of the human diet in all countries and ages shows that our food consumption is primarily controlled by circumstances. The popular lendency is to consider food merely as a means of supplying the necessary bulk for the body to function normally. Earlier work in nutritional and medical research indicated that the food we consume must supply suffici- ent energy. The unit of food energy is termed as the calorie. Till recently very great emphasis was laid on the supply of the requisite amount of calo- ries for people of different ages and in different avocations of life. Thus, it was believed that a fairly active man of medium height and weight could maintain his weight by eating food containing 2,500 to 2,600 calories. The rations for the fighting forces were for a long time fixed on the basis of calorie standard, the daily requirements of the army being generally deemed to be over 4,000 calories per man. This notion was subsequently replaced by later discoveries in nutritional science which proved that besides energy, the human body requires protective foods largely made up of dairy pro- ducts, vegetables and fruits. All these foods provide certain essential health-promoting substances called vitamins, the absence or inadequacy of which results in mal-nutrition, a host of diseases, poor growth and low efficiency of the body.

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