Congress, when the day comes, in the post-war, will be able to establish conditions whereby the present list would be maintained and foreign oil not be necessary.

Mr. POAGE. If you will look at this list you will see that in every year since 1935 we have used less coconut oil.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. I would like to ask at this point that that list be inserted in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection that will be done. (The list is as follows:)

Oleomargarine: Materials used in manufacture, United States, 1935–421

1 Quoted from Fats and Oils Situation, Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, U. S. Department of Agriculture, February 1943.

2 Includes beef fat, oleostearine oil, and tallow.

Includes cottonseed stearine, soybean stearine, vegetable stearine, and miscellaneous vegetable oil. 4 Less than 500 pounds.

Includes ouricuri oil, palm flakes, palm stearine, rape oil, and rice oil.

Source: Internal Revenue records and Internal Revenue Bulletin. Data for earlier years beginning 1913 are given in Oleomargarine, op. cit., pp. 14-17.

Oleomargarine: Materials used in manufacture, United States, January to August, inclusive, 1943

Source: Compilations of National Association of Margarine Manufacturers from monthly reports from the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Doctor, going back to Mr. Poage's question, I would say I feel the question he asked related in a considerable degree to a large number of States. We have come a long way in Oklahoma and have cleaned up the situation there, largely due to our State department of agriculture. But conditions were pretty bad with reference to cream before that. I would like to ask this: Do we need you all the butter and all the margarine that is being manufactured today? Is the demand greater than the supply? What do you say about that?

Dr. GUNDERSON. I think that point is very well covered in this report. It is well known that in wartime in any country the demand for fats is greatly increased. I think the committee was motivated in part, in its inspection of this special subject, by the concern the committee had over the danger of a shortage of total fats available for American domestic dietary uses.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I would like to ask one other question. Right now the oleo largely is made from cottonseed oil; is it not?

Dr. GUNDERSON. According to this table we have examined there are a number of ingredients.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Cottonseed and soybean.

Dr. GUNDERSON. Of which cottonseed and soybean oil seem to be the main ones; yes.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. What proteins are in the greatest demand by the livestock and dairy and beef industries? Isn't it from cottonseed oil and soybean meal?

Dr. GUNDERSON. I presume it is from soybean and cottonseed meal. I don't know in which order.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. And mixed they make an excellent feed?
Dr. GUNDERSON. That is my understanding.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Both as to protein for beef

Dr. GUNDERSON. Yes, sir; they are considered protein concentrates in either case.

Mr. GILLIE. I would like to ask Dr. Gunderson-during my days as a food inspector back in Indiana, we operated under a State pure food law. Then all preserves and the like contained benzoate of soda. I would like to ask the doctor if he thinks it absolutely necessary that this one-tenth of 1 percent of benzoate of soda should be added to the oil to keep it in good shape.

Dr. GUNDERSON. I don't know whether it is necessary or not. I have explicit confidence in the judgment of the Food and Drug Administration to exercise wise guidance and control in that matter.

Mr. GILLIE. It was found that it was not necessary in tomato catsup, for instance, so I wondered if it was necessary to put benzoate of soda in the oil to preserve it.

Dr. GUNDERSON. I do know something about the procedure of hearings in connection with the formulation of definitions and standards, and I think we all, who are familiar with that, have confidence that the Food and Drug Administration, under the guidance of Commissioner Campbell, exercises control compatible with good, sound evidence.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Doctor, I am wondering if your council has made any study of certain new proposals changing the diet of the American people, such as in the case of taking corn and soybean meal and making some kind of a synthetic product that would take the place of meat energy, as they call it. It would have the same nutritive value as meat.

Dr. GUNDERSON. The committees of the council, and the Food Nutrition Board as a whole, are cognizant of the need for a more efficient utilization of these protein concentrates which are available for human food use and which are not to this moment fully utilized, and in the light of the present emergency is giving its encouragement, as it sees fit, to the broadening of the uses of some of these less common protein concentrate food materials.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Do you agree with the theory that instead of feeding the corn to hogs and beef cattle that they could make some kind of a synthetic food out of the corn, mixed with soybeans and cottonseed cil, that will be just as good as beef or pork?

Dr. GUNDERSON. I think it is not entirely a question of going all the way in this direction, or all the way in that direction. We all recognize that animals as converters are not 100-percent efficient. No animal to my knowledge, no domestic animal, returns 1 pound of protein as food for each pound of protein fed to that animal. The animals of various species vary considerably, and so as the country, and as all the world becomes harder pressed for maintaining human nutrition, it is inevitable, as I see it as a nutritionist, that more of our vegetable proteins must be eaten as food directly from plant to human,

rather than through the intermediate conversion through the domestic animal. But no one would want to subsist entirely without animal foods. We like them. So it may be wise for the United States in its dietary patterns to bend a little more in the direction of direct nutrition, vegetable crop to human mouth, than we have done in the past. Mr. GILLIE. Under O. P. A. meat-rationing regulations aren't we forced to do what you suggest?

Dr. GUNDERSON. I think, in effect, we are.

Mr. GILLIE. Eat more hay and oats and corn?

Mr. ANDRESEN. Your idea is that some synthetic food can be perfected that will give a greater nutritive value than beef or pork?

Dr. GUNDERSON. No; that is not my thought. In the first place, I wouldn't call the eating of legume or cereal or vegetable or fruit foods synthetic.

Mr. ÅNDRESEN. As I understand it, they are proposing now in one of these agencies that they perfect a food made out of corn, soybean oil, oleo meal, and needle them with certain vitamins to give it a greater nutritive value than meat.

Dr. GUNDERSON. I don't know to what you have reference, but, as I say, as we become harder pressed, if that be the case, for nourishment of humans, in the light of our requirements to ship for our armed forces, our allies, and for rehabilitation abroad, I think it is quite inevitable that we will necessarily need to eat more of our total calories, more of our total proteins, more of our minerals, and so forth, directly from vegetable foods-and by that I mean everything in the plant kingdom-eat it directly without the intermediate and less efficient conversion by the animals.

Mr. ANRESEN. Following your philosophy, maybe that is one reason why a gentleman in North Carolina said that the Government is gradually strangling the dairy business and feed business.

1

Mr. GILLIE. I would like to ask the Doctor this; there are some experiments being carried on with reference to a variation in the quality of proteins, the difference in the quality of proteins from meats and proteins from vegetables. There is quite a difference there; is there not?

Dr. GUNDERSON. There are many angles to that question which are not answerable at the moment. A good deal of research is going on in that respect. Each time we learn about new vitamins or their functions some of the older conceptions about the wide difference between animal proteins versus plant proteins-those differences seem to narrow with the discovery of new vitamins and more mineral elements which play a role in nutrition. In other words, some of the differences in so-called protein quality, as they were conceived 20 years ago, have now been dispelled. Some of them, and only some, have been dispelled by the advancing knowledge in nutrition with respect to vitamins and minerals, and with more specific knowledge as to just which amino acids are important in our nutrition.

Mr. GILLIE. Is it true that some experiments have been carried on quite recently along that line? Our National Food Council, I think, has recommended that our people, and that includes the world, in order to get the greatest amount of proteins possible in their food should resort to proteins from the vegetables, because of the fact that there is not enough meat to furnish the proteins. Now, the facts of the case are that that is not working out. I can't tell you exactly, h

think of the amino acids there are, I think, six-I am not sure about that-that are very important in sustaining the necessities of the soldiers. For that reason they cannot feed a soldier proteins from vegetables; he has to have proteins from meat. For that reason we are going to have to change our system of production some way or other so as to get more meat. They simply cannot get along and do this hard work. These people in the factories can't do the work they are called on to do on a vegetable diet and it is going to be necessary to have a greater production of meat in the future in this country. Now, I would like to ask you if that is not true, that it is necessary that we have more meat. We have to have a better meat diet than we have had in the past in order to bring these people up to a point where they can give better service and produce more.

Dr. GUNDERSON. I think it is obvious to all of us that there are some workers, even some war workers, who because of the disruption in the flow of foods and because of the intensive increase in population in certain centers, are not obtaining enough of the meats just as they are not obtaining enough of other classes of foods. I am not at all sure that I agree with you in your inference that, by and large, in the average American diet we need to eat more meat. I am not sure that, as a matter of bare necessity, for nutritional reasons, barring any esthetic reasons, that we need to eat more meat per capita. This country already eats more per capita than many other countries, as I said a minute ago, as the requirements of our people and the people dependent on us increase, and our food resources are pressed harder, it seems inevitable that we must eat more of our foods directly from the vegetable kingdom and less from the animal. In other words, the man-hours, the acres, the dollars to feed through the intermediate channels are greater than through the direct procedure.

Mr. GILLIE. I have already checked up on that partially. I got the impression that it is going to be necessary for our workers to eat more meat, because the proteins from the vegetable diet are not holding them up.

Dr. GUNDERSON. I don't know of any satisfactory and complete answer to that question. The problem is being worked out. Doctors Stare and Thorn, of Harvard University Medical School, reported only a few months ago, at the Pittsburgh meeting of the American Chemical Society, that in a test of 8 weeks with adult humans, exercising severely, that those men got along and maintained nitrogen balance with as little as 50 grams of protein per day per man, of which they stated as little as 5 grams could come from animal sources. That was a rather surprising finding, and I want to exercise due restraint in interpreting that. I think we cannot fully interpret it at the moment. That was only an 8-weeks' test. Maybe a 1-year test would show something different. But if our nutritional conception of protein requirement is changing at all, I think it is changing in a down direction rather than in an up direction.

Mr. GILLIE. The last amino acid that has been discovered-I can't think of the name of it; I think it is phenoglyanine

Dr. GUNDERSON. I wonder if it is methonine or threonine?

Mr. GILLIE. No; it is new-phenoglyonine. That is only found in the meat proteins and it is absolutely necessary to help the digestion of the food for the man who does hard physical work.