Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Vitamins in Fleshy Fruits
Pierre Baldet, Carine Ferrand and Christophe Rothan*
Villenave d'Ornon, France
8.1 Introduction
Austrian armies named Kramer wrote a
report indicating that intake of fruits and
vegetables would prevent scurvy affecting
the soldiers. Later, in 1747, a Scottish
doctor named James Lind undertook one
of the fi rst controlled and scientifi c
experiments carried out at that time, aimed
at identifying which diet components
could cure scurvy. His recommendations
for including citrus fruits in the sailor's
diet were initially ignored, but the British
navy eventually added limes to the food
stores on board, which effectively pre-
vented scurvy. It took almost three
centuries (1932) until the antiscorbutic
factor, named vitamin C, was purifi ed by
Dr Szent-Gyorgyi from pepper fruit, which
resulted in him being awarded a Nobel
Prize in 1937. Meanwhile, whilst working
on beriberi, a vitamin B1-defi ciency
disease, Casimir Funk (1912) developed
the concept of vitamins. Vitamins refer to
non-mineral micronutrients essential for
human life:
vita
is the Latin word for life
and, at that time, Funk thought that all
vitamins were amines, which is not the
case. The fi nal 'e' was later dropped in
English to acknowledge this fact.
Given their utmost importance in
preventing a wide range of human
diseases, decades of research have been
devoted to vitamins since their fi rst
Grains (rice, wheat, maize) and tubers
(potato, cassava) constitute the staple foods
in most human diets. They provide major
nutrients required for sustaining a healthy
and productive life in humans, such as
polysaccharides, lipids and proteins.
Cereal and tuber-based diets, however,
need to be diversifi ed by the addition of a
variety of foodstuffs, such as legumes,
vegetables and fruits, which will add
micronutrients to the staple food. Micro-
nutrients are essential dietary elements
required in very small quantities and not
synthesized by humans. They comprise
minerals (e.g. selenium, zinc) and vitamins,
defi ciencies of which are responsible for
numerous human diseases.
The crucial role in the human diet of
fresh fruits and vegetables for preventing
various diseases has been known for
centuries. The well-known example of the
discovery of the role of
L
-ascorbic acid, or
vitamin C, illustrates how the link between
a diet including fl eshy fruits, the
prevention of scurvy and the intake of
vitamin C was made. Scurvy is a fatal
disease that frequently affected sailors on
long voyages, or soldiers, whose diet
consisted mostly of bread, meat or beans.
As early as 1737, a doctor from the
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