COMPARISON AND INTERPRETATION ON A CALORIC BASIS OF THE MILK MIXTURES USED IN INFANT FEEDING

Abstract

Great progress in the study of nutrition has been brought about within the past two decades by new procedures in the feeding of experimental animals, particularly small animals. In earlier investigations, complex foods as they occur in nature were used, and important nutritive factors were often more or less unknowingly modified. In the more recent work, test rations of relatively simple foodstuffs, the proximate composition of which is known, are fed and the ensuing effect on the health and nutrition of the animals correlated with the variable or variables in the diet being studied. In this way, the rôle of certain nutrients in metabolic processes has been perceived. The method has reached its greatest refinement in the hands of Osborne and Mendel who, in their experiments on the rat, have employed "synthetic" diets of salts, vitamins and purified protein, carbohydrate and fat. The adoption in infant feeding of the fundamental