Economic and financial section > Problem of nutrition

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army recruiting offices have to be rejected. Many students also have to
break off their studies or pursue them less vigorously.
All these circumstances involve a considerable waste of vital force
in a small nation, quite apart from the fact that those who are fit to
work have to spend an unnecessarily large proportion of their earnings
on keeping and feeding those who are unfit to work or unable fully
to earn their living.
The primary cause of this position in regard to the nutrition of the
greater part of the people is that the diet is not suitable in its constituents,
and is not adjusted to differences in age, health, occupation and natural
conditions. The great majority of the people still belong to a class
earning very low wages, so that for financial reasons thay have to be
satisfied with a diet which is insufficient in quantity and often too
monotonous.
France.
Principal Foodstuffs.
As far as may be judged from the statistics, which are very incomplete,
it would appear that the people of France are consuming less bread
and cereal foods and less meat than formerly. On the other hand,
they are consuming more milk products, butter and cheese, fresh
vegetables and fruit, and even more fresh fish.
It is a fact generally accepted on the strength of data available from
the past that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the average
Frenchman consumed about 250 kilogrammes of bread per year ; from
the investigations carried out in 1934 by the Societe scientifique d’hygiene
alimentaire et d’alimentation rationnelle, it would appear that, in
Paris, the average per capita consumption scarcely exceeds 120 kilo¬
grammes of bread each year. It may be assumed that the quantity
of bread consumed by the rural population is greater ; nevertheless,
the decline in the general consumption of bread has been so marked
that it may be regarded as having fallen by at least 25% since the
beginning of the century.
During the second half of the last century, the consumption of meat
had very greatly increased. According to the estimates of the Office
national de renseignements agricoles, it amounted, round about i860,
to 1,200,000 tons, and to more than 2,000,000 tons round about 1910,
or averages of 26 and 50 kilogrammes respectively per head of population,
half of those quantities consisting of beef.
Since the war, meat consumption has varied considerably. After
the end of the war, there was a marked increase in the consumption
of butcher’s meat in the country districts, whereas, in the cities,
consumption appeared to be on the decline. Taken as a whole, therefore,
consumption was more or less stable. There would, however, appear