bread, and apples; on the other hand, by one composed of canvas-back duck, truffles, lettuce, celery, cranberries, white bread and butter, cream, coffee, and perhaps a dozen other items.  We love all the various sensations that come from the mingling in a meal of food hot and cold, moist and dry, crisp and soft, sweet and sour, exhibiting the artistic touch as well as the homelier virtues; it is the sacrifice of pleasure of the esthetic sort that food economy and to some extent food conservation entail.

The first step in food economy (aside from saving of waste) is to emphasize the use of cereal foods.  As much as one-fourth the food money may be invested in grain products without nutritive disadvantage.  But this is not the last word on the subject, since cereal foods, while cheap, differ among themselves in cost and somewhat in nutritive value.  It is possible to confine one’s choice to some which contribute little besides fuel to the diet, such as rice and white flour, or to include those which are rich in other essentials, such as oatmeal.  It is difficult to express briefly this difference in foods in any concrete fashion, but recently a method of grading or “scoring” foods has been introduced which may help to make clearer the relationship between nutritive value and general economy.

We cannot live exclusively upon foods which furnish nothing but fuel, though fuel is the largest item in the diet and one which in an effort to economize is apt to fall short; hence a food which furnishes nothing but fuel will not have as high a “score” as a food which will at the same time supply certain amounts of other essentials, such as protein, calcium (lime), iron, and the like.  By giving definite values to each of the dietary essentials taken into consideration and comparing the yield of these from different foods, we may have such a score as follows:[1]

Grain             Score value
products           per pound

White flour         1,257
Graham flour        2,150
Rye flour           1,459
White bread         1,060
Graham bread        1,525
Cornmeal            1,360
Oatmeal             2,465
Cream of wheat      1,370
Hominy              1,147
Corn flakes         1,090

    [1] For the method of calculation and further data see “The
        Adequacy and Economy of Some City Dietaries” by H.C.  Sherman
        and L.H.  Gillett, published by The New York Association for
        Improving the Condition of the Poor, 105 East Twenty-second
        Street, New York City, from which these figures are taken.

By comparing the score with the price per pound we can easily see which contributes most to the diet as a whole for the money expended.  Thus, if hominy and oatmeal cost the same, the oatmeal is more than twice as cheap because we not only get a little more fuel from it but we also get protein, calcium, iron, and phosphorus in considerably larger amounts; that is, we shall need less of other foods with oatmeal