How Much Do We Really Know about Our Requirements for Energy and Protein?

It is really simpler and more practical not to try to solve this problem in too biochemical and scientific a way. The historical approach is both interesting and instructive, particularly if one sticks to straight forward investigations of what ordinary mortals have been found to eat, and the lives these people have led. Thus it is proposed to do and to illuminate the results by the interpretations, right or wrong, that have been put upon the findings from time to time. The approach will be physiological and little reference will be made to pathology.