and increased the demand we all felt the sugar famine and it became a mark of patriotism to refuse candy and to drink coffee unsweetened.  This, however, is not, as some think, the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful luxury, the sacrifice of a pleasant sensation.  It is a real deprivation and a serious loss to national nutrition.  For there is no reason to think the constantly rising curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maximum or optimum.  Individuals overeat, but not the population as a whole.  According to experiments of the Department of Agriculture men doing heavy labor may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their daily diet without any deleterious effects.  This is at the rate of 275 pounds a year, which is three times the average consumption of England and America.  But the Department does not state how much a girl doing nothing ought to eat between meals.

Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to keep a man going for a day the best source of supply is the carbohydrates, that is, the sugars and starches.  The fats are more concentrated but are more expensive and less easily assimilable.  The proteins are also more expensive and their decomposition products are more apt to clog up the system.  Common sugar is almost an ideal food.  Cheap, clean, white, portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ-free, highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, easily assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue.  Its only fault is its perfection.  It is so pure that a man cannot live on it.  Four square lumps give one hundred calories of energy.  But twenty-five or thirty-five times that amount would not constitute a day’s ration, in fact one would ultimately starve on such fare.  It would be like supplying an army with an abundance of powder but neglecting to provide any bullets, clothing or food.  To make sugar the sole food is impossible.  To make it the main food is unwise.  It is quite proper for man to separate out the distinct ingredients of natural products—­to extract the butter from the milk, the casein from the cheese, the sugar from the cane—­but he must not forget to combine them again at each meal with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper proportion.

[Illustration:  THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become a close rival of the sugar cane of the south]

[Illustration:  INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE]

[Illustration:  Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.

VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY

In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out]