Seafoods : their wartime role in maintaining nutritional standards

Recent years have witnessed improved dietary changes, due largely to an increase in knowledge of nutrition and to a wide dissemination of this knowledge. Since about 1915 there has been a significant upward trend in· the consumption of milk, green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and citrus fruits-the so-called protective foods-all of which are extremely rich in those nutrients that are often deficient in low-cost diets. The total weight of food consumed per person per year has remained fairly constant, but there has been a downward trend for meats, grain products, and potatoes, and the use of the protective foods has been increasing. The proportion of calories derived from these latter sources has approximately doubled since the beginning of the century. From.a health standpoint this trend is most encouraging, yet the proportion of calories derived from meats, grains, and mature legumes is still over 70 per cent. Probably half the food calories should be derived from milk and milk products, fruits, vegetables, and eggs. Now, wartime restrictions have changed what were fairly well-balanced family diets into diets deficient not only in certain minerals and vitamins but also in animal proteins essential for the maintenance of normal health. Fresh seafoods, since these are not rationed, should be seriously considered as a source of the indispensable animal proteins