Much effort has been expended in recent years by a number of investigators, with a view to determining very accurately the vitamin content of different foods. It has seemed to McCollum and Simmonds, from the results of their studies, that this matter has excited greater interest than its importance justifies. They found in numerous comparative studies that different samples of cereal grains differ considerably in their content of water-soluble B. Steenbock's observations relative to the differences in fat-soluble A content of different samples of maize, is another evidence which supports the view that rather general statements as to the relative values of many of our common foods with respect to the uncharacterized dietary essentials is all that we can profitably seek to make on the basis of experimental tests. We are already in possession of about all the specific information in this field that we can make practical use of. The fact, that we can readily prepare diets from ordinary wholesome foods which will contain at least three to five times the minimum amounts of vitamins on which apparently normal nutrition can be maintained over long periods, tends to render the discussions, which one so frequently sees nowadays about the advisability of taking concentrated commercial preparations of vitamins, a purely academic one, and based upon fallacious reasoning and lack of clarity of vision or of familiarity with existing literature describing experimental data.