I took a dog of 3 years old fat and in good health

"I took a dog of 3 years old, fat, and in good health, and put it to feed upon sugar
alone… it expired the 32nd day of the experiment"
■ is there any single food that can sustain life?
■ at the time, bone broth was thought to sustain life (cheap, readily available)
■ today we know that bone broth is mostly gelatin and that gelatin alone cannot
sustain life
■ today, even with the scientific evidence that bone broth is not life sustaining some
people still believe that bone broth is the next best thing
■ it is not bad per say but is very low in vitamins, therefor providing minimal
benefits
● the story of vitamins

○ started with the beriberi disease from Sri Lanka (which roughly translates to "I cannot, I
cannot")
■ crippling disease
■ interested Dr. Christian Eijkman (1858-1930)
■ at this time, germs were newly discovered and being talked about
■ he investigated beriberi as possibly a "germ" disease and that it could be
transmitted
■ to test this took blood from someone who was suffering from beriberi and
injected in into chickens with no results (nothing happened)
■ one day he noticed that his chickens were getting sick and showing signs
similar to beriberi
■ it was not his injections that had done this because it was long passed
■ the chickens actually recovered from the disease that resembled beriberi
when their diet changed from white to brown rice
■ Eijkman concluded incorrectly that the starch in polished rice carries a
toxin and the bran carries something that neutralizes the toxin (incorrect
interpretation)
■ another researcher discovered that beriberi was a disease of malnutrition
and vitamin deficiency
■ the sufferers of beriberi mostly based on a diet of polished rice
■ only 1 out of 10,000 prisoners in Java developed beriberi in the prisons
that mostly served brown rice
■ 1 out of 39 developed it in those that served white rice
○ so what is in brown rice that prevents this disease?
■ many years later was discovered that it is the vitamin compound B1
■ Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1861-1947)
■ 1906 - diets consisting of pure proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals,
and water fail to support animal growth
■ "accessory food factors" were required
■ simply stated - even if you had a diet that had all the nutrients that at the
time were thought to be essential, you were not supported in growth,
therefore there must be something else
○ both Eijkman and Hopkins were given the nobel prize for the discovery of what we now
know as Vitamin B1
■ the molecular structure was developed much later
■ they just know that this substance could be isolated from certain foods and used
to cure beriberi
■ Casimir Funk (1884-1967) - polish biochemist
■ isolated "anti-beriberi factor" from brown rice and determined it
was an "amine"
■ believed that other diseases such as rickets, scurvy, and pellagra
were also deficiency diseases
■ coined the term "vitamin" for "vital amines" in 1912
■ postulated that there existed other diseases that are a result of
deficiencies in vitamins
■