Effects on the general health and nutritional status of children of partial replacement of rice in a poor vegetarian diet by tapioca flour.

In previous publications of this series (Subrahmanyan, Murthy & Swaminathan, 1954;
Murthy, Swaminathan & Subrahmanyan, 1954) we reported that: (I) replacement of
25 % of rice in a poor rice diet by tapioca flour did not affect the overall nutritive value
of the diet as judged by the growth of young rats, and (2) the retention of calcium in
adult human beings on a rice-tapioca diet was greater than that observed on a rice
diet; the retention of nitrogen was of the same order on both the diets. The present
paper describes the results of an experiment carried out to study the effects on the
growth and nutritional status of children of replacing 25 % of rice in a poor rice diet
by an equal quantity of tapioca flour.