A Change of Heart (a history of the Framingham Heart Study)
A Change of Heart: How the People of Framingham, Massachusetts, Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease by Daniel Levy and Susan Brink
histories
First small lab animals for nutrition research in United States
Elmer McCollum, 28, started the first colony of small lab animals for nutrition experimentation in the United States in 1907. He was a new PhD working under E.B. Hart in the College of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His project was to find out why cows became malnourished when fed a single …
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History of the Discovery of Vitamin D by Anthony Norman
It is largely through historical accident in the interval of 1920-1940 that vitamin D became classified as a vitamin rather than as a steroid hormone. The formal definition of a vitamin is that it is a trace dietary constituent required to produce the normal function of a physiological process or processes.
Supply of clean milk key to sharp decline in infant mortality in U.S.
Cleaning the market milk supply was the single most important contributor to the steep decline in infant mortality in the U.S. starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to a systematic review of historical data by Kwang-Sun Lee of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine.
Infant formula industry and creation of new pharmaceutical markets by Rima Apple
“The development of the first commercial infant formulas resulted from the research of Justus von Liebig, the agricultural chemist…Concerned for the health of infants deprived of breast milk, especially two of his own grandchildren whose mothers could not nurse, Liebig constructed in the 1860s what he considered the ‘perfect’ infant food.
First case-control study: ice cream spreads scarlet fever in 1924
In the summer of 1924, an outbreak of scarlet fever occurred in Flint, Michigan. Unable to trace it to the usual causes, particularly fresh milk, the Michigan Department of Health used a novel approach to disentangle the enigma: The 116 cases of scarlet fever were compared with 117 “controls” selected from neighbors of the quarantined …
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How Vitamin D and the Sun Came to Be Linked by R.W. Chesney
The seminal discovery that sunlight was important in the prevention of nutritional rickets was made in 1890 by Theobald A. Palm, a medical missionary who contrasted the prevalence of rickets in northern European urban areas with similar areas in Japan and other tropical countries.
Vitamin D, cod-liver oil, sunlight, and rickets: a historical perspective by Kumaravel Rajakumar
Rickets, a disease of vitamin D deficiency, is rarely confronted by the practicing pediatrician in the United States today. At the turn of the 20th century, rickets was rampant among the poor children living in the industrialized and polluted northern cities of the United States. With the discovery of vitamin D and the delineation of …
History of Scurvy & Vitamin C by Kenneth Carpenter
From the publisher: The first modern survey of the long and fascinating history of the various ideas and theories about the cause of scurvy, the nutritional deficiency disease that has caused (with the exception of famine) the most human suffering in recorded history.
University of California at Berkeley Nutrition history
The Journey from Home Economics to Nutrition and Toxicology. Although UC Berkeley did not have an official Department of Nutritional Sciences until 1962, landmark human and animal nutrition research on campus dates back to the 1870s. Researchers that today would be in the nutrition department spanned a variety of academic units in both the College …
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Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard
How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World. From the publisher: We may not give much thought to the boxes in our freezers or the cans on our shelves, but behind the story of food preservation is the history of civilization itself.
Diet in poor communities in U.S. 100 years ago by Robert Dirks
Atwater and his colleagues began studying food consumption in the closing years of the nineteenth century and from the very start devoted much effort to collecting data from poor and minority households. This paper reviews some of the fruits of these labors, particularly from the standpoint of what they contribute toward a better historical understanding …
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Evolution and the Need for Ascorbic Acid by Linus Pauling (1970)
Linus Pauling: I conclude that the optimum daily requirement of ascorbic acid for a human being requiring 2500 kcal of food energy is about 2.3 g (2300 mg) (2.6 g for an adult male, and 2.0 g for an adult female), or is greater than this amount.
Human Calorimeter, first in U.S.
Located in the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Science at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. from the USDA Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin 44 (1897): The apparatus used in the experiments herewith reported consists essentially of a respiration chamber in which the subject stays during the experiment,
Nutrition Investigations among Fruitarians and Chinese (1901)
from OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS— BULLETIN NO. 107. CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 1899-1901. “We often hear those who recommend a vegetarian diet say, “See how much hard work the Chinamen can do, and they live almost entirely upon rice,” and many believe that the Chinese to a great extent are vegetarians.
Dietary study of Chinese farm workers in 1899 California
The first dietary study of Chinese residents in the United States, conducted at the agricultural experiment station of the University of California in 1899-1901, by M. E. Jaffa, M. S., assistant professor of agriculture of the University of California.
Elements of the Science of Nutrition by Graham Lusk (1906)
The aim of the present book is to review the scientific substratum upon which rests the knowledge of nutrition both in health and in disease. Throughout, no statement has been made without endeavoring to give the proof that it is true.
