Accessory Food Factors: Understanding the Catalytic Function

Abstract

Despite the practical knowledge throughout the nineteenth century that citrus fruit cured scurvy, and that rickets and beriberi were diseases caused by poor diet, it was not until 1901 that animal feeding experiments led one investigator to propose the existence of 'accessory food factors,' a lack of which was determined to be the cause of some illnesses (Hopkins, 1949. In Joseph Needham and E. Baldwin (eds.), Hopkins and Biochemistry, 1861-1947: Papers Concerning Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, O.M., P.R.S., with a Selection of His Addresses and a Bibliography of His Publications. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Ltd). The discovery of vitamins has long been considered as a delayed discovery. This delay has been attributed to the power of the germ theory in physiology at the time. While the germ theory and theories of auto-intoxication certainly played a role in delaying the discovery of vitamins, I argue further that it is important to consider the difference made to physiology by understanding the vitamins' catalytic function. The profound difference made to physiology by the vitamins' catalytic function suggests that a vitamin concept had previously been systematically inaccessible to researchers working within the conceptual framework of Bernardian physiology.

The importance of thiamine (vitamin B1) in plant health: From crop yield to biofortification

“…Beriberi affects the nervous, cardiovascular, and digestive systems, causing numbness, weakness, atrophy, and eventually death. A paradigm shift, away from the long-held germ theory, led to the acceptance that diseases could also be caused by lack of "accessory food factors" as well as by pathogens (19). It was not until 1901 that beriberi was proposed to be a deficiency syndrome arising from poor diet (19), which could be avoided by consumption of rice bran, which is normally removed during the conversion of brown rice to white, polished rice (17).…”

“…A paradigm shift, away from the long-held germ theory, led to the acceptance that diseases could also be caused by lack of "accessory food factors" as well as by pathogens (19). It was not until 1901 that beriberi was proposed to be a deficiency syndrome arising from poor diet (19), which could be avoided by consumption of rice bran, which is normally removed during the conversion of brown rice to white, polished rice (17). Many attempts to char-acterize and isolate the specific rice bran chemical and "antiberiberi compound" were made, until the final structure was determined in 1936 and named thiamine (20).…”

Yeast, coal, and straw: J. B. S. Haldane's vision for the future of science and synthetic food

“…: 153). Individual components of food, notably vitamins, were found to be integral to both the health and inner metabolism of the body (Braun, 2011). Despite this literature, however, Haldane's long-standing support of synthetic food has yet to be thoroughly examined.…”