Dietary studies with reference to the food of the Negro in Alabama in 1895 and 1896 / conducted with the cooperation of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama ; reported by W.O. Atwater and Chas. D. Woods.

  • Wilbur Olin Atwater
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dietary studies with reference to the food of the Negro in Alabama in 1895 and 1896 / conducted with the cooperation of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama ; reported by W.O. Atwater and Chas. D. Woods. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    99 METHODS OF THE DIETARY INVESTIGATIONS. Tlie details of tlie work at Tuskegee were carried out in the spring of 1895 by Mr. J. W. Hoffman, of the Institute, and Mr. H. M. Smith, special agent of this Department, and in 1896 by Mr. Hoffman. Mr. Green, the farm manager of the Institute, was very helpful in inducing families to allow the investigations to be carried on in their cabins. The whole was under the oversight of Mr. Washington. The study of individual dietaries generally continued two weeks. On the first day the house was visited, and the pork, meal, flour, molasses, milk, and other food materials on hand were weighed. Each day thereafter a visit was made to the house, and if new materials had been bought meanwhile, they were also weighed. Arrangements were made by which such new materials were kept until they were weighed before any portion was used. As the food was generally purchased only once a week and consisted mainly of fat pork, corn meal, and molasses, the weighing of these articles was a simple matter. With milk, however, especial care had to be taken to insure accurate account of the quantity used. The weighing was done with a large grocers’, scale and a small spring balance. At the end of the period of obser¬ vation an inventory of the food materials on hand was made as at the beginning. The figures of these two inventories, with those of the materials purchased during the study, served for computing the quan¬ tities actually consumed. The houses were generally visited once and sometimes twice a day. With a horse and wagon it was not difficult to make the rounds between breakfast time and dark. A considerable number of samples of food materials used were taken for analysis and transmitted to Professor Boss in Auburn, as previously stated. CALCULATION OF RESULTS. The quantities of nutrients in the several dietaries were calculated from the weights of the food materials and the proportions of nutrients in each. As it was not found convenient to analyze specimens of all the materials used in each house, enough specimens were selected to give a general idea of the composition, and the composition of the others was assumed from the analyses of these and of other specimens of similar materials. The detailed tables of results sliowr the number of specimens analyzed. As the food consisted almost entirely of salt pork, wheat flour, corn meal, molasses, and milk, materials of tolerably uniform composition, the errors involved in assuming the composition of the specimens not analyzed could hardly be of great importance. The tabular statement of results beyond give the total quantities of food consumed by each family during the whole period of observation and also the estimated quantities per man per day. These latter esti¬ mates are made as follows: It is assumed that a man doing moderately hard muscular work will require on the average a certain amount of nutrients in his daily food, that a woman will eat less, and that young children will eat still less. Counting the amount for the man at
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