CANTEEN FEEDING

Abstract

MUCH has been written, in NATURE and elsewhere, on the relative merits of research that has absolutely no practically useful end in view and of research that it is hoped will lead to improvements in practice. The latest meeting organized by the Nutrition Society was held on May 30 to consider “Problems of Collective Feeding in War Time”, and it gave invaluable evidence on the ease with which nutritional and biochemical research could produce immediately useful results without coercion of the research worker or any sacrifice of interest in the more fundamental aspects of science. Few research workers can have attended the meeting without being impressed by the extent to which pure scientific research was needed as a preliminary to the solving of the very practical problems of food distribution and cooking. If more meetings can be held at which men of science have the opportunity of learning about the problems that arise in practice, it is very probable that much of the necessary practical research will in fact get done with no greater interference with the freedom of choice of the individual research worker than we had in the last years of peace. It is greatly to be hoped therefore that the Nutrition Society will organize other conferences along the lines of the one that has just been held.