Learning Nutrition from Nutrient Sciences of History

Abstract

McCollum and Davis started to observe that the lab rats eat some food to lead to poor growth, so they want to prove the reason for failure in development. Experimenting with two different rats’ diets, added to only butterfat and an additional extra of the diet supplement. Result added to the addition of the supplement of diet is to heal and expect growth (Mcllum, 1917). In another story, Chemist Casimir Funk noticed the symptoms of beriberi in chickens. Then he used chickens in the laboratory to feed leftover rice with processed until a new cook changed brown rice. The chickens soon recovered from beriberi. The birds got well again a few days after switching to brown rice to birds. Eijkman thought that processing rice lacked a dietary component found in brown rice. The beriberi caused by an absence in the dietary ingredient, which he called “the anti-beriberi factor.” Korsakoff studied the effects of alcoholism on the nervous system and drew attention to several cases of alcoholic polyneuropathy with distinctive mental symptoms (Korsakoff’s syndrome) due to the defense of Thiamin. Finally, Eijkman proved that the disease was not caused by blood contamination, respiratory metabolism, or temperature variation. Eventually, it was determined that the missing compound causing beriberi was vitamin B1, whose name is Thiamine. Eijkman with Sir Frederick Hopkins won the 1929 Nobel Prize for Medicine; interest in extracted food nutrients began in the latter half of the 19th century with Thiamin’s first vitamin. Thiamin was water-soluble. vitamiN B2 Following Thiamine of the discovery, researchers realized that one or more additional water-soluble factors called the vitamin B2 complex. Observing a pigment in milk with yellow-green, whole wheat, yeast, and liver began by chemist Alexander Wynter Blyth in 1872. Until late 1991, Riboflavin was the second vitamin to be isolated. They thought no nutritional disease causes riboflavin deficiency until they experimented with young Rats to feed with the food extract and observed that the young growth is outstanding to prove Riboflavin’s growth-stimulating properties. Riboflavin is the precursor of the coenzymes Flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and flavin mononucleotide (FMN). Several oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions are involved in energy production, and numerous metabolic pathways act as electron carriers. Riboflavin deficiency can affect multiple paths in the metabolism of vitamin B6, folate, niacin, and iron. Riboflavin deficiency has been linked to preeclampsia in pregnant women. This condition may progress to eclampsia and cause severe bleeding and death. The risk of preeclampsia has recently been associated with the presence of a genetic variant (C677T) in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene. This gene codes for the MTHFR enzyme, which is FAD-dependent.