8

     So that to have estimated the amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat in a
satisfactory European diet and then, by calculations based on the chemical analyses
of Indian food materials, to work out the combinations of those food-stuffs that
will provide the identical amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat, will give us
a diet that, by chemical analysis, is identical as regards the quantities of alimentary
principles present, but one from which a very dissimilar amount of nutritive
material is capable of being absorbed.

     As we have already said—and to this point we shall have to return—even
the comparatively inferior European food materials show an absorptive co-efficient
of 85 per cent. while the superior Indian food-stuffs' co-efficient rarely exceeds 60
per cent. when they are given in the quantities laid down in the jail dietaries we
have examined.

     The fallacy therefore comes in that, in giving any of these dietaries which have
been framed to provide more or less identical amounts of the different proximate
principles that have been in use in Europe, instead of obtaining a similar degree of
absorption a very much lower amount of the nutritive value is made use of; so
that what is thought—for instance, in a diet such as would be framed on Lewis's
standard—to give a metabolism of over 70 grammes of protein per man daily
in all probability would really only give a metabolism of just about 50 grammes
of protein.

     As we shall have evidence to bring forward on this later, at present it is suf-
ficient to say that one of the important causes of this poor absorption is the fact
that, in order to provide a diet containing anything approaching the standards of
European diets in proximate principles, so much of the Indian food materials
has to be given that less than the optimum absorption takes place, the mere bulk
interfering with absorption.

     Another point which is clear from what we have said above in connection with
diets framed on European experience, is that, having provided a diet of Indian food
materials that contains a similar amount of the different alimentary principles, and
having found by practical experience that such a diet is sufficient for all the physio-
logical requirements of labouring prisoners, and knowing that this Indian food diet
only permits of say 50 grammes of protein being absorbed while the European
(identical in proximate principles but made up of different food materials) permits
of 70 grammes being absorbed daily, it is surely possible so to arrange a dietary
that it will provide for the absorption of 50 grammes of protein and a sufficiency
of all other constituents without having to lose 20 grammes of protein per man
daily as compared with the European prisoner. This also is a subject to which we
have devoted a good deal of attention.

     While making these criticisms on the dietaries that have been framed for
Indian prisoners, and particularly on the work of Lyon and Lewis, we have no wish