NUTRITION AND VITAMINS

NUTRITION AND VITAMINS. Nutritional science was essentially unknown prior to the 1890s, but its origins can be traced to investigations into digestion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the most important of these investigations commenced in 1825 when American surgeon William Beaumont (1785–1853) made meticulous notes on the physiological processes of digestion in a live human subject by direct observations through a permanent fistula created by an accidental gunshot wound. His 238 observations, published in 1833, formed the basis for our modern under-standing of the gastric processes.

At the same time, European investigations elucidated the principles of nutritional biochemistry. In a classic study by English physician William Prout (1827), foods were classified into what would later be known as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Studies into the nature of proteins by the French physiologist François Magendie (1816), Dutch physician Gerrit Jan Mulder (1838), and French agricultural chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1839) also expanded the understanding of nitrogen-containing foods in nutrition. Michel Eugène Chevreul first chemically described fats (1828), and Boussingault demonstrated the conversion of carbohydrates into fats in experiments with geese and ducks (1845). Knowledge of carbohydrates' role in nutrition was based on the work of Carl Schmidt (1844), H. von Fehling (1849), and Claude Bernard (1856).

While digestion and biochemistry formed the foundation of modern nutritional science, the concept of specific foods as fuel sources for the body was unclear until means for explaining and expressing it could be devised. That was discovered through the application of caloric values to foods and their components (for example, carbohydrates, fats, and sugars).

Nutrition and Calories

A calorie represents the heat energy necessary to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. Food calories, however, are actually measured in kilocalories (1,000 calories = one kilocalorie) and then converted into whole caloric measures. The calories of any food essentially represent the amount of potential energy it provides. The development of calories as a measure of energy supplied in the food itself grew out of early studies on respiration and combustion by the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier in 1777. A series of British investigations furthered this seminal work with research on animal heat by Adair Crawford in 1778, energy metabolism by Edward Smith in 1857, and the sources of muscular power by Edward Frankland in 1866. Through his combustion calorimeter, Frankland was able to determine the heat units of twenty-nine different foods and thus first introduced the quantitative energy concept of foods as they relate to human physiology.

It was an American, Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844–1907), who in 1897 developed a modern calorimeter capable of measuring heat production, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide elimination. By the beginning of the twentieth century, he had developed simplistic nutritional notions that emphasized a diet high in calories. As a result, Atwater recommended that poor and working-class Americans adopt a diet rich in carbohydrates and low on green vegetable "luxuries." The important interplay of caloric intake to comparative nutritional food values would await the discovery and elucidation of vitamins and minerals as essential elements to human health.

Vitamins and Minerals

While the relationship of diet to health had long been noted in the empirical observations of Luigi Cornaro (1467–1566) and Sanctorius (1561–1636), no rationale for it could be established until the discovery of vitamins and the role of minerals in maintaining health. This was accomplished when Casimir Funk (1884–1967) first correlated the etiologies of scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, and rickets to dietary deficiencies. In a landmark 1912 paper, Funk coined the word "vitamine" from "vita" (Latin for life) and "amino" (a group of organic compounds containing a univalent nitrogen radical). When it was subsequently discovered that not all "vitamines" included amines, the "e" was dropped. However spelled, Funk correctly concluded that vitamins in trace amounts could cure and prevent a range of dietary deficiency diseases. Born in Poland, Funk became an American citizen in 1920. While serving as Associate in Biological Chemistry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, a translation of his now-classic treatise on The Vitamines (a greatly expanded version of his 1912 paper) was issued in 1922. While others during the same period and even earlier were associating specific diseases with diet (that is, Dutch physician Friedrich Bachstrom[1686–1742] first associated the cure for scurvy with the introduction of fresh fruits into the diet, investigations later carried forward by James Lind [1716–1794]; Christiaan Eijkman [1858–1930] in 1896 deduced beriberi from polyneuritis contracted by chickens that were fed white rice; U.S. Public Health Service officer Joseph Goldberger [1874–1929] in 1914 identified pellagra as a nutritional deficiency disease; and English pharmacologist Edward Mellanby [1884–1955] explored the dietary cause of rickets in 1919), Funk's discovery of vitamins' role in health provided the necessary conceptual framework through which virtually all nutritional science would proceed in the modern biochemical era.

The identification of vitamins is roughly based on their order of discovery, although some have been subsequently dropped from the list as not "true" vitamins. While the chemical structures associated with these compounds are gradually replacing the more generic alphabetical vitamin names (A, B₁ B₂, etc.), the public still recognizes the more traditional designations. Much of the pioneer work in elucidating specific vitamins came from the laboratory of Kansas native Elmer V. McCollum (1879–1967). In 1913 McCollum, along with colleague Marguerite Davis, discovered a fat-soluble vitamin A; nine years later he would identify vitamin D. McCollum is also noteworthy for utilizing rats as research subjects rather than the previous practice of using large farm animals. McCollum revolutionized nutritional research with the use of rats, which were smaller, easier, and cheaper to maintain than cows, sheep, and even chickens. Rats' high metabolism rates provided the added bonus of quicker lab results.

While a complete listing of American contributions to vitamin research is impossible here, some major figures are worthy of mention. In 1922 embryologist Herbert Evans (1882–1971), working with Katharine Scott Bishop (1889–1976), discovered vitamin E (±-tocopherol). In 1933 Roger J. Williams (1893–1988), working at the University of Texas at Austin, identified vitamin B₃ (pantothenic acid). Under Williams's direction from 1941 to 1963, the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute became the preeminent research center for the discovery and elucidation of vitamins.

Investigators were slower to appreciate the importance of minerals to human health. Eugene Baumann (1846–1896) discovered that the thyroid gland was rich in iodine, a revelation that led Cleveland, Ohio, researcher David Marine (1880–1976) in 1918 to identify iodine deficiency as the chief cause of goiter. Studies in the early twentieth century on the importance of iron, copper, zinc, manganese, and other essential elements in the diet provided a fuller understanding of minerals in human nutrition.

As the 1920s closed, nutrition had come a long way in a comparatively short period of time. A measure of that advance is demonstrated in the founding of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences in 1928.

Vitamins and the American Public

By the 1930s the accumulated knowledge about vitamins sparked unprecedented public interest in nutrition. Nowhere has that been more obvious than in America's fixation with vitamin and mineral supplements. Combining doses of science and pseudoscience with commercial hype, food and drug companies began inundating consumers with assorted vitamin ad campaigns, catapulting vitamin sales from a bit more than $12 million in 1931 to well over $82 million by 1939. In the 1940s and 1950s, patent medicine manufacturers and food producers dazzled health-seeking Americans with an array of "vitamin for tified" products. The fact that individuals can become toxic from fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A and that other vitamin supplements taken in large doses are simply eliminated by the body has not dampened a vitamin industry that is a $6.5-billion-dollar a year business. Indeed, one historian has characterized this uniquely American phenomenon as a veritable "vitamania."

None of this, however, should trivialize the importance of vitamins and minerals in the daily diet. Just a few examples include vitamin A (beta-carotene), essential for vision and skin; vitamin B₁ (thiamine), necessary for normal carbohydrate metabolism, the lack of which causes beriberi; vitamin B₂(riboflavin), important for energy metabolism of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates; vitamin B₃ (niacin), which maintains the nervous system, digestion, and skin, and chronic deficiency of which may result in pellagra; vitamin C (ascorbic acid), crucial for healthy gums, teeth, and bones, and necessary for the prevention of scurvy, which results when vitamin C is chronically absent from the diet; and vitamin D (calciferol), which helps maintain appropriate levels of calcium and phosphorus and severe deficiencies of which can result in rickets.

Nutrition and Public Policy

The importance of vitamins and minerals became painfully evident during the Great Depression, when large numbers of Americans suffered from malnutrition as the result of poor and incomplete diets. The draft during World War II (1939–1945) also revealed large numbers of young men who were unable to meet the military service standards largely due to nutritional factors. These two facts, more than any others, helped move nutrition into the forefront of public awareness and ultimately public policy.

To address these issues, a limited public food program was put into operation from 1939 to 1943 under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The "War on Poverty" during the 1960s saw this program revisited. An important part of this nutritional revival in American public policy came as the result of a stirring if not disturbing survey, Hunger in America (1968). After several hunger marches on Washington and pressure from activist organizations such as The National Council on Hunger and Malnutrition in the U.S., President Richard Nixon convened a conference to examine the problem of hunger and poor nutrition in America. The results of this activity saw the establishment of a national food stamp program in 1974. While food stamps did not eradicate malnutrition in the United States, surveys conducted in 1978–1979 showed that it had largely disappeared as an endemic feature of American poverty.

In the early 1980s, however, the Reagan administration trimmed $12 billion out of various food assistance programs, causing them to shrink by one-third to one-half of their former sizes. With soup kitchens, churches, and other private welfare organizations unable to make up the difference, pressure from beleaguered city leaders beset by problems attendant with these diminished programs caused Congress to vote $9 billion back into food assistance budgets by the end of the decade.

The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) administers all the dietary assistance programs of the USDA. While the Food Stamp Program remains the cornerstone of this effort, other initiatives to provide good nutrition to Americans include a special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children; child nutrition programs such as the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs; and a variety of food programs for the elderly. The total cost of all FNS programs in 2000 was $32.6 billion. In 2001 federal food programs provided assistance to approximately 17.3 million Americans.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apple, Rima D. Vitamania: Vitamins in American Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Carpenter, Kenneth J., Alfred E. Harper, and Robert E. Olson. "Experiments That Changed Nutritional Thinking." Journal of Nutrition 127 (1997, Supplement): 1017S–1053S.

———. "Nutritional Diseases." In Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine. Edited by W. F. Bynumand Roy Porter. Vol. 1. London: Routledge, 1993.

Funk, Casimir. The Vitamines. Translated by Harry E. Dubin. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1922.

Mayer, Jan. "National and International Issues in Food Policy." Lowell Lectures (Harvard University, 1989). Updated 14 April 1998. Available from http://www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/lowell/jmayer.html.

McCollum, Elmer Verner. A History of Nutrition: The Sequence of Ideas in Nutrition Investigations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. A classic source written by a pioneer in the field.

Todhunter, E. Neige. "Historical Landmarks in Nutrition." In Present Knowledge in Nutrition. 5th ed. Washington, D.C.: The Nutrition Foundation, 1984.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services." Last updated 14 May 2002. Available at http://www.fns.usda.gov/fns/. [Web source: Last updated 14 May 2002]. Provides current information on all the nutrition programs administered by The Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA.

Michael A.Flannery

Casimir Funk on "Vitamines"

Despite the fact that a number of ideas originated by us are credited to others, it is a source of pleasure to witness the great progress that has been made in vitamine research. In our opinion, the name "Vitamine," proposed by us in 1912, contributed in no small measure to the dissemination of these ideas. The word, "vitamine," served as a catchword which meant something even to the uninitiated, and it was not by mere accident that just at that time, research developed so markedly in this direction. (p. 18)

I regarded it of paramount importance, that the then ruling conception of the necessity of the lipoids or the nuclein substances was substituted by the fundamentally different vitamine theory. At the same time, I must admit that when I chose the name, "vitamine," I was well aware that these substances might later prove not to be of an amine nature. However, it was necessary for me to choose a name that would sound well and serve as a catchword, since I had already at that time no doubt about the importance and the future popularity of the new field. As we noted in the historical part, there was no lack of those who suspected the importance of still other dietary constituents, besides those already known, for the nutrition of animals. These views were unfortunately unknown to me in 1912, since no experimental evidence had appeared in their support. I was, however, the first one to recognize that we had to deal with a new class of chemical substances, a view which I do not need to alter now after eight years. (p. 36)

SOURCE: Casimir Funk, The Vitamines, translated from the second German edition by Harry E. Dubin. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1922.