“It is the story of people like Chef Hercules, our nation’s first White House chef; and Emmanuel Jones, who used his skills to transition out of enslavement into a successful career cooking in the food industry, evading the oppressive trappings of sharecropping. It is also the story of countless unnamed cooks across the South, the …
How enslaved chefs helped shape American cuisine Read More »
Of the 43 scientists listed as contributing information for the initial Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) values in 1941, 25 were women, according to an historical account by Alfred Harper. That was in addition to the women who served on the RDA panel.
The first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn “carried a menu of freeze-dried powders, tubed spaghetti and roast beef, and a variety of foods reduced to bit-sized cubes The cubes flaked into crumbs that floated around the astronaut’s capsule,” according to a military history of food in space.
Robert Falcon Scott and his party of four others likely starved to death on their return from the South Pole in 1912 because they underestimated their caloric needs and did not have enough rations to sustain their exertions, according to Lewis Halsey and Mike Stroud.
“Plato’s works are imbued with the fundamental principle of moderation. This spirit is characteristically evident in his references to human diet.
“In the 1880s, women began in large numbers to supplement their own milk with cows’ milk shortly after giving birth and to wean their babies from the breast before they were 3 months old.
“There was great uncertainty at that time regarding the adequacy of our food supply as consumed by either the civilian population or the rapidly growing military forces. Accordingly, there was intense pressure on the Board to act quickly and reliably…
“The Food and Nutrition Board was first organized in 1940, as a committee within the Division of Biology and Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council and charged with advising the National Government in very broad terms, relative to foods and nutrition. This action was a part of the intense effort to strengthen …
Deficiency diseases “were considered for years either as intoxications by food or as infectious diseases, and twenty years of experimental work were necessary to show that diseases occur which are caused by a deficiency of some essential substances in the food. Although this view is not yet generally accepted, there is now sufficient evidence to convince …
Casimir Funk sums up scientific evidence for “vitamines” in 1912 Read More »
“Beginning with the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938 and escalating with the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments, increasing pressure has been placed on pharmaceutical manufacturers to demonstrate that a drug’s benefits outweigh its risks. Nowhere has the question of risk versus benefit come under greater scrutiny than with anorectics.
Michael F. Holick: “…the concept that vitamin D is one of the most toxic fat-soluble vitamins has been instilled in the psyche of health regulators and the medical community…The evidence is clear that vitamin D toxicity is one of the rarest medical conditions…”
Gerald Oppenheimer: “In the epidemiological imagination,the Framingham Heart Study has attained iconic status, both as the prototype of the cohort study and as a result of its scientific success.
George Washington’s mess kit For more than a century after 1776, the basis of all troop feeding–for soldiers in camp, on the march, in action, or just surviving–was the simple fare of meat and bread, and sometimes vegetables, known as the garrison ration.
1939 Cicely Williams presents a talk on bottle-baby deaths and condensed milk to the Singapore Rotary Club. Using the title Milk and Murder she said that “misguided propaganda on infant feeding should be punished as the most criminal form of sedition, and that those deaths should be regarded as murder.” 1968 Dr. Derrick Jelliffe coins …
Timeline of Nestle boycott over sale of infant formula Read More »
Until a little over a century ago, there were no federal laws or regulations in place to protect the public from potentially dangerous substances in medicines or foods. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed a chief chemist to serve in the new Department of Agriculture. This appointment marked the beginning of the Bureau of Chemistry, …
Food Safety Milestones in History of FDA 1880-2010 Read More »
Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (THE “WILEY ACT”) PUBLIC LAW NUMBER 59-384 34 STAT. 768 (1906) 21 U.S.C. Sec 1-15 (1934) (REPEALED IN 1938 BY 21 U.S.C. Sec 329 (a))
Eleven submitted to Experiments by U.S. Health Authorities All Develop Dread Disease Experiments Conducted by Dr. Goldberger Proved Unbalanced Diet Cause of Disease The Intelligencer (Anderson, South Carolina) November 2, 1915
Here is Herbert McLean Evans’ account of his discovery of vitamin E when he was professor of anatomy at the University of California at Berkeley in 1922.
