QUANTITY OF FOOD NECESSARY TO SUPPORT LIFE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1842, 17 January 1880, Page 3

QUANTITY OF FOOD NECESSARY TO SUPPORT LIFE.

Tho question asked by a conespondent as to the quantity of food necessary to support life is, we suppose, rather intended as in icquiry as to the quantity needed by adult person in the ordinary vocations of life. An American soldier has daily given him 22 ounces of bread, 12 ounces of pork or bacon, or 20 ounces of fresh or salt beef, 10 ounces of potatoes three times a week, 1.6 ounces of rice, with 1.6 ounces of coffee. 2 01 ounces of sugar, .61 of a gill of beans, .32 of a gill of beans, .32 of a gill of vinegar, 0.16 of a gill of salt. As to the quantity of this food, it is larger and more abundant than would seem at first sight to be necessary, but tbe liberality in food has this great advantage, that, in time of hard work, the fatigue of the individual is diminished and the power of recuperation sensibly increased. The total quantity, then, provided for a soldier of the United States army is larger than is consumed by the general working man. Of course, various conditions of life, climate, and locality have to do with the quantity of food. Thus, an idle person can get along very well with 2.75 ounces of nitrogenous food (flash and cereal or vegetable food), when, if the same individual were walking or in active outdoor life, double this quantity might be used. Perhaps theßsquimaux represent the heaviest feeders in the world, for Parry tells of a young native who de voured in the twenty-four hours nine and a half pounds of sea-horse, half raw, half cooked; one and three-fourths pounds of bread ; one and one-fourth pints of good strong soup ; one and three fourth pounds of ship bread ; and nine pints of water, not counting grog and spirits. Both Sir John Ross and Dr. Hayes, from personal observation, declare that the daily ration of an Esquimaux may range from twelve to twenty pounds of flesh blood. On the otner hand, it is quite remarkable how small a quantity of food a man may eat, and still, retain his healta, though, as to the point of mental vigor engendered by scanty fare, that is another question. Cornaro, who wrote a treatise on long life, subsisted for fifty-eight years on twelve ounces of vegetable matter and fourteen ounces of wine per diem, while another case is cited of a man existing for quite twenty years on sixteen ounces of flour per diem, made into some kind of a pudding,