§ 4 Food Considered Exclusivelyy as Source of Heat
We have seen that food is, in the first place, a source of chemical energy; and, in the second place, a source of vital energy—finally, and consequently, a source of thermal energy. It is this last point of view which has exclusively struck the attention of certain physiologists, and hence has arisen a peculiar manner of conceiving the rôle of food. It consists in looking on food as a source of thermal energy.
This conception is easily applied to warm-blooded animals, but to them exclusively—and this is where it first fails. The animal is warmer than the environment in general. It is constantly giving out heat to it. To repair this loss of heat it takes in food in exact proportion to the loss it sustains. When it is a question of cold-blooded vertebrates, which live in water and in most cases have an internal temperature which is not distinguishable from that of the environment, we see less clearly the thermal rôle of food. It seems then that the production of heat is an episodic phenomenon, not existing for itself.
However that may be, food is in the second place a source of thermal energy for the organism. Can it be said, inversely, that every substance which we introduce into the economy, and which is there broken up and gives off heat, is a food? This is a moot point. We dealt just now with purely thermogenic foods. However, most physiologists are inclined to give a positive answer. In their eyes the idea of food cannot be considered apart from the fact of the production of heat. They take the effect for the cause. To these physiologists everything ingested is called food, if it gives off heat within the body.
To be heated by food is, indeed, an imperious necessity for the higher animals. If this need be not satisfied the functional activities become enervated; the animal falls into a state of torpor; and if it is capable of attenuated, of more or less latent, life it sleeps in a state of hibernation; but if it is not capable of this, it dies. The warm-blooded animal with a fixed temperature is so organized that this constancy of temperature is necessary to the exercise and to the conservation of life. To maintain this indispensable temperature there must be a continual supply of thermal energy. According to this, the necessity of alimentation is confused with the necessity of a supply of heat to cover the deficit which is due to the inevitable cooling of the organism. This is the point of view taken up by theorists, and we cannot say that they have no right to do so. We can only protest against the exaggeration of this principle, and the subordination of the other rôles of food to this single role as a thermogen. It is the magnitude of the thermal losses which, according to these physiologists, determines the need for food, and regulates the total value of the maintenance ration. From the quantitative view it is approximately true. From the qualitative point of view it is false.
Such is the theory opposed to the theory of chemical and vital energy. It has on its side a large number of experts, among whom are Rubner, Stohmann, and von Noorden. It has been defended in an article in the Dictionnaire de Physiologie by Ch. Richet and Lapicque. They hold that thermogenesis absolutely dominates the play of nutritive exchanges; and it is the need for the production of heat that regulates the total demand for Calories which every organism requires from its ration. It is not because it produces too much heat that the organism gets rid of it peripherally: it is rather because it inevitably disperses it that it is adapted to produce it.
Rubner’s Experiments.—This conception of the rôle of alimentation is based on two arguments. The first is furnished by Rubner’s last experiment (1893). A dog in a calorimeter is kept alive for a rather long period (two to twelve days); the quantity of heat produced in this lapse of time is measured, and it is compared with the heat afforded by the food. In all cases the agreement is remarkable. But is it possible that there should be no such agreement? Clearly no, because there is a well-known regulating mechanism which always exactly proportions the losses and the gains of heat to the necessity of maintaining the fixed internal temperature. This first argument is, therefore, not conclusive.
The second argument is drawn from what has been called the law of surfaces, clearly perceived by Regnault and Reiset in their celebrated memoir in 1849, formulated by Rubner in 1884, and beautifully demonstrated by Ch. Richet. In comparing the maintenance rations for subjects of very different weights, placed under very different conditions, it is found that the food always introduces the same number of Calories for the same extent of skin—i.e., for the same cooling surface. The numerical data collected by E. Voit show that, under identical conditions, warm-blooded animals daily expend the same quantity of heat per unit of surface—namely, 1.036 Calories per square yard. The average ration introduces exactly the amount of food which gives off sensibly this number of Calories. Now, this is an interesting fact, but, like the preceding, it has no demonstrative force.
Objections. The Limits of Isodynamism.—On the contrary, there are serious objections. The thermal value of the nutritive principles only represents one feature of their physiological rôle. In fact, animals and man are capable of extracting the same profit and the same results from rations in which one of the foods is replaced by an isodynamic proportion of the other two—that is to say, a proportion developing the same quantity of heat. But this substitution has very narrow limits. Isodynamism—that is to say, the faculty that food has of supplying pro ratâ its thermal values—is limited all round by exceptions. In the first place, there are a few nitrogenous foods that no other nutritive principle can supply; and besides, beyond this minimum, when the supply takes place, it is not perfect. Lying between the albuminoids and the carbohydrates relatively to the fats, it is not between these two categories relatively to nitrogenous substances if the thermal power of food were the only thing that had to be considered in it, the isodynamic supply would not fail in a whole category of principles such as alcohol, glycerin, and the fatty acids. Finally, if the thermal power of a food is the sole measure of its physiological utility, we are compelled to ask why a dose of food may not be replaced by a dose of heat. External warming might take the place of the internal warming given by food. We might be ambitious enough to substitute for rations of sugar and fat an isodynamic quantity of heat-giving coal, and so nourish the man by suitably warming his room. In reality, food has many other offices to fulfill than that of warming the body and of giving it energy—that is to say, of providing for the functional activity of the living machine. It must also serve to provide for wear and tear. The organism needs a suitable quantity of certain fixed principles, organic and mineral. These substances are evidently intended to replace those which have been involved in the cycle of matter, and to reconstitute the organic material. To these materials we may give the name of histogenetic foods (repairing the tissues), or of plastic foods.