Jim Myers, age 12, of Columbia, Tennessee, for his question:
WHEN DID WE LEARN ABOUT NUTRITION?
Nutrition as a science started in 1780 when a French chemist named Antoine Lavoisier discovered that food and oxygen combine in the body to produce energy.
Earlier, in 1753, a Scottish physician named James Lind had studied deficiency diseases. He found that sailors who lived for long periods on salted beef and dry biscuits could prevent the disease of scurvy by adding lemon juice to their diets.
As man came to understand nutrition, the deficiency diseases were conquered one by one. A Dutch scientist named Christiaan Eijkman studied beriberi in military prison camps and in about 1900 he found that those who ate whole rice, rather than polished rice, did not get the disease. It was discovered that something in the hulls was necessary for health.
In the early 1900s, scientists discovered vitamins and amino acids, organic acids that make up proteins. The British biochemists Frederick Hopkins and Edward Mellanby studied the composition of proteins and the role of vitamins.
Two American biochemists, Elmer McCollum and Lafayette Mendel, demonstrated the body's need for amino acids and vitamins. Mendel identified vitamin A in 1913. Vitamin D was identified by McCollum in 1922.
Increased knowledge about nutrition was accompanied by improved techniques of food production. Intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides and improved strains of plants greatly increased crop production. This abundance, with increased knowledge of nutrients, led to greater concern for the hungry and undernourished people of the world.
Nutrition is the science that deals with foods and the way the body uses them. Good food is essential for health as well as survival.
The science of nutrition overlaps into several other fields of science: medicine, physiology and biochemistry.
Nutrition is part of medicine because nutritionists study diseases caused by malnutrition. Nutritionists study digestion as part of physiology, the science that deals with how the body works. They also study biochemistry, the science of various chemical reactions that take place in the body.
In 1937, the League of Nations established a committee to study nutrition. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed "Freedom From Want" as one of the goals of the war.
Nutritional research has helped reduce hunger throughout the world. But millions of people still suffer from malnutrition and it remains one of the most important world problems.
A number of United Nations agencies have been established to help people in every part of the world deal with the important subjects of health and nutrition.