Nutritional Status U.S.A.

One of the problems of interpretation of nutritional and metabolic studies of the sick is the paucity of control data which delineates the range of variation in persons free from disease. In 1935 the first group of investigators from the Land Grant Colleges of the North Central area banded together to develop methods for measuring nutritional status of healthy populations. Since these investigators were members of Home Economics faculties and both money and facilities were limited, they chose to work with healthy young women as this was the human commodity at hand. During the next 10 years more than 30 papers were published describing the growth, development, biochemistry, physiology, and eating practices of healthy women 17 to 25 years of age. More importantly, the investigators and their students gained a significant experience in cooperative research. The passage by Congress of the Research and Marketing Act, later a part of