The History and Measurement of Nutritional Science

The history of nutritional science is, in large part, a history of solving deficiency diseases through careful observation before their precise biochemical causes were understood. For centuries, sailors on long ocean voyages suffered and died from scurvy, a disease later understood to result from vitamin C deficiency, while other populations relying heavily on polished rice or maize developed beriberi and pellagra, respectively, without any of these connections to diet being recognized until systematic investigation in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. The eventual identification of vitamins as a distinct class of essential dietary substances, achieved only in the early twentieth century, resolved centuries of confusion in which such diseases were variously attributed to infection, poison, or unfavorable climate, and represents one of the more significant turning points in the history of medicine and public health.