The enthusiasm excited by a persistent study of the problem of
human nutrition is inspired by the need of an intelligent scheme of
information and instruction which may be understood by mothers and
teachers for the benefit of children. Unlike the young of the lower
animals, the babes of mankind have some years of dependent existence
during which much unconscious murder is committed, and during which the
innocents are more or less poisoned with bad suggestions that weaken
them all through life. Colts, calves, pigs, chickens, and the like
survive the period of dependence in much greater proportion than do the
young of their human masters survive the infantile stage of existence,
and this is largely due to the lack of basic or parent knowledge
on the part of mothers relative to their own nutrition, and also a
pitiable ignorance concerning the nutrition of their children, the
double ignorance constituting a double crime.
Even if careless about ourselves, is it not shameful that we do not
concentrate effort in learning the truth about our instinctive means
of protection in our own alimentation and in classifying the knowledge
in a way that will make it available to children, through their proper
guardians, when they arrive in the world "as helpless as a babe"?
If knowledge which seems to be protective had not been evolved out of
recent experiment, or if the hope of gaining such knowledge had not
been collected from good authority, the appeal might seem futile; but
this is not the case. The most intelligent and studious investigators
are united in the belief that the problem can be scientifically solved
and the confusion of ideas settled by concentrated personal and
collective study of economic nutrition, through observation of the
natural requirements, and by trial of the care in taking food which is
necessary to secure the most profitable economies.