Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Food Structure for Nutrition
Danielle G. Lemay,
1
Cora J. Dillard
1
and J. Bruce German
1,2
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DEPARTMENT OF FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS CA 95616, USA
2
NESTLE
ยด
RESEARCH CENTER, P.O. BOX 44, CH-1000 LAUSANNE
26, SWITZERLAND
1.1 Introduction
The great tradition of nutrition research has seen the creation of an unprec-
edented knowledge base of the essential nutrients, together with their absolute
quantitative requirements at different life stages, and the pathological pheno-
types experienced by populations who fail to consume sufficient quantities of
them. The research that was necessary to assemble this knowledge base of
essential molecules is one of the life science's great achievements. In retrospect,
the achievement was made possible by some key strategic decisions by nutrition
scientists. First, there was the critical decision for nutrition to become a
molecular science. The object of the study of nutrition, namely food, was
physically and conceptually disassembled into individual molecules. By elim-
inating food structure from nutrition research, it became possible to feed
animals with purified diets in which specific suspected nutrients were explicitly
included or assiduously removed. If the molecule was an essential nutrient, its
elimination from a diet fed to a growing, reproducing animal model would
produce overt deficiency symptoms. This so-called 'fault model' of nutrient
discovery was critical to scientific studies designed to identify the essential
nutrients. As a result of this very successful research strategy, all of the
vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids that are essential to the growth
and reproduction of animals and humans are now known.
The knowledge of the nutrients that are necessary for humans shifted the
public health emphasis to strategies designed to ensure that populations con-
sume diets that achieve adequacy of all of the essential nutrients, and are thus
sufficient to prevent deficiency diseases. An underlying assumption in this
public health emphasis and focus on essential nutrients was that diets contain-
ing all of the essential nutrients in adequate amounts would largely eliminate
diet-related diseases. But it has become disturbingly clear that it is possible to
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