Nutrition: Cutting Calories

The affluent life in the U.S. of the 1960s is also the sweet life, the fat life and the soft life—or so the top U.S. experts have decided. Last week they announced that if the average American male wants to stay lean and healthy, he should cut 300 calories out of his daily diet and his wife should cut 200 from hers.

The change has come about since 1958, said the Food and Nutrition Board of the Government-sponsored National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. The board sets up “recommended dietary allowances” for what it calls a “reference man”—a healthy 25-year-old who weighs 154 lbs. and leads a moderately active life. By the board’s 1958 findings, that man was supposed to stay healthy and not too hungry on 3,200 calories a day. Now he is advised to get by on 2,900.

The difference is the caloric content of two average martinis. The board has soberly concluded that Americans are drinking more, and that more Americans are drinking. This is boosting the calorie intake even of people who are telling the truth when they say they don’t eat too much. Another factor in the board’s reasoning is that mechanization is reducing the amount of body fuel that modern Americans burn up in physical activity. The power lawn mower figures in the need for the reference man to eat less, and electric washing machines and clothes dryers are important contributors to the recommendation for a 25-year-old, 128-lb. woman to cut back from 2,300 to 2,100 calories a day.

The board’s recommended food allowances for adults of all ages have been reduced in the same proportions, by about 10%. The experts counsel of perfection: nobody should gain weight after age 25.