Essential Nutrition Facts
Nutrition Influence On Our Health
From ancient times, nutritional discoveries have positively impacted health and well-being.
What is nutrition?
Nutrition is the process by which living organisms take in and use food for growth, tissue repair, and overall nourishment. Nutrients, essential for life, must come from food.
Nutrition has long been overlooked as a key factor in achieving optimal health. Only recently, and mainly among early adopters, has its importance in athletic performance, healthy aging, disease prevention, and overall longevity been widely recognized. To unlock its full potential, significant advancements in nutrition are needed.
Why is nutrition important?
In today’s world, understanding nutrition is crucial. Pollution and modern farming methods have depleted vital minerals from the soil, while diets high in additives, sugar, and unhealthy fats contribute to diseases like cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and osteoporosis. Good nutrition plays a key role in disease prevention and overall health.
Before exploring areas ripe for innovation, it’s helpful to look at the history of nutrition to understand how we arrived at this point.
A Brief History of Nutrition Origins
The science of nutrition, which holds the promise of improving health naturally, has deep historical roots.
400 B.C. – Hippocrates, known as the “Father of Medicine,” famously told his students,
“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”
He also emphasized,
“A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings.”
Foods during this time were often used as medicines or cosmetics, and early writings from the Far East and biblical texts referenced food’s role in health. For example, eye diseases caused by vitamin A deficiency were treated by applying liver juice—rich in vitamin A—directly to the eye.
1500s – Leonardo da Vinci, the renowned scientist and artist, compared the body’s metabolic process to the burning of a candle.
1747 – Dr. James Lind conducted the first scientific experiment in nutrition. Early seafaring explorers unknowingly contributed to the discovery of vitamins. On long voyages, sailors relied on dehydrated foods and fish, with little or no fresh produce, leading to vitamin C deficiency and scurvy. Symptoms like weakness, tooth loss, and bruising appeared within 10–12 weeks. However, it was observed that consuming fresh “acid fruits” like citrus quickly reversed these symptoms, often within a week or two.
The British Navy acted on this observation, incorporating lemon or lime juice into sailors’ daily rations, effectively eliminating scurvy. The exact cause of the cure remained unknown until the 1930s, when Hungarian researcher Albert Szent-Györgyi identified vitamin C.
Modern science explains why scurvy was such a common issue. Vitamin C is water-soluble, has a high daily requirement, and cannot be synthesized by humans. Since it is poorly recycled in the body, it is often the first nutrient depleted, making scurvy one of the earliest signs of deficiency. British sailors, often plagued by scurvy due to a lack of fresh food on long voyages, were tested with various remedies. Lind found that sailors who consumed limes recovered, though vitamin C—the key nutrient—was not identified until the 1930s. This earned British sailors the nickname “Limeys.”
Important Discoveries in Nutrition Science
1770 – Antoine Lavoisier, known as the “Father of Nutrition and Chemistry,” uncovered how food is metabolized. He demonstrated that combining food with oxygen in the body produces heat and water, explaining the source of animal heat.
Early 1800s – Scientists discovered that food is primarily made up of four elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. Methods to measure these elements were also developed.
1840 – Justus Liebig, a German chemist, identified the chemical composition of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. He explained that carbohydrates are made of sugars, fats of fatty acids, and proteins of amino acids.
1897 – Christiaan Eijkman, working in Java, discovered that the disease beriberi could be cured by diet. Chickens fed white rice developed symptoms, while those fed unprocessed brown rice did not. He found that the rice bran contained vitamin B1 (thiamine), which was essential for preventing the disease.
1912 – E.V. McCollum, using rats for research, discovered the first fat-soluble vitamin, Vitamin A. He found that butter, rich in Vitamin A, kept rats healthier than lard.
1912– Dr. Casimir Funk coined the term “vitamins,” referring to substances in food that prevent diseases like scurvy, beriberi, and pellagra. The word “vitamin” comes from *vital* and *amine,* as these compounds were initially thought to be amines essential for life.
1930s – William Rose identified essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
1940s – The water-soluble vitamins B and C were discovered and classified.
Advances in Nutrition
The roles of essential nutrients in bodily processes became clearer, revealing how vitamins and minerals function as components of enzymes and hormones critical for the body’s operation.
1968 – Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling introduced the concept of Orthomolecular Nutrition, which means providing the body with the right molecules in the right amounts to optimize health. Pauling’s research in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that high doses of intravenous vitamin C might improve the quality of life and survival rates in terminal cancer patients.
1994–2000: Nutritional Supplement Regulations – The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), passed in 1994 and updated in 2000, established guidelines for what can and cannot be claimed about supplements without FDA approval. While manufacturers cannot claim to prevent or cure diseases, they can describe how supplements support the structure or function of the body (e.g., “maintains a healthy heart” or “helps you relax”).
This law was a significant milestone, recognizing the growing belief in the benefits of supplements and empowering consumers with information to make informed nutritional choices. It also gave manufacturers more freedom to communicate how their products could support overall health.
Nutrients work at the molecular level by activating cell-signaling pathways. Nutritional scientists are now focusing on how natural compounds in cells can be targeted to produce specific and beneficial effects.
Understanding which nutrients, and in what exact amounts, influence these pathways for health benefits is still in its early stages and holds great potential for innovation.
To promote optimal health, we must shift from focusing on minimal nutrition to achieving optimal nutrition levels. This requires renewed dedication to basic nutritional research, especially understanding how nutrients work at the molecular level.
SOURCES Nutrition Breakthrougs