Do the sources employed by historians of nutrition science and nutrition policy

making have anything to offer those concerned with the narrative approach

to everyday food behaviour?

David Smith, Hon Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine, University of

Aberdeend.f.smith@abdn.ac.uk

Introduction: outline• Some key dimensions of nutrition science in

the interwar period• Outputs and messages of those who studied

dietary habits systematically• Some surviving archival material from the

dietary surveys• Messages from the vitamin camp

Interwar vitamin enthusiasm and scepticismVitamin pioneers / enthusiastic

Cambridge School Vitamin scepticsGlasgow School

Conducted dietary surveys

HopkinsNobel prize for vitamins

1929

MellanbyVitamin

theory of rickets

CathcartPaton

John Boyd OrrDirected Rowett Institute,

Aberdeen

• Paton, D.N., Dunlop, J.C., and Inglis, E. (1900) A study of the diet of the labouring classes in Edinburgh carried out under the auspices of the town council of Edinburgh Otto Schulze and Co., Edinburgh.

• Lindsay, D. E. (1913) Report upon the Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in the City of Glasgow carried out under the auspices of the Corporation of the City. (With introduction by Professor D.N.Paton.) Corporation of Glasgow, Glasgow.

• Ferguson, M., Findlay, L. (1918) ‘A study of social and economic factors in the causation of rickets’, Medical Research Committee Special Report Series no. 20

• Cathcart, E. P., Paton D.N. and Greenwood, M. (1924) ‘A Study of Miners' Dietaries’, Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 87.

• Paton, D.N. and Findlay, L. (1926) ‘Child Life Investigations. Poverty Nutrition and Growth. Studies of Child Life in Cities and Rural Districts in Scotland’ Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 101.

• Cathcart, E.P. and Murray, A.M.T. (1931) ‘A study in nutrition; 154 St. Andrews families’, Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 151.

• Cathcart, E.P. and Murray, A.M.T. (1932) ‘Studies in nutrition; an enquiry into the diets of families in Cardiff and Reading’, Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 165.

• Cathcart, E.P. and Murray, A.M.T. (1936) ‘A dietary survey in terms of actual foodstuffs consumed’, Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 151.

• Orr, J. B. (1936) Food, Health and Income, London, MacMillan• Cathcart, E.P., Murray, A.M.T. and Beveridge, J.B. (1940) ‘An enquiry into the diet of families in the Highlands

and Islands of Scotland’, Medical Research Council Special Report Series no.242.• Rowett Research Institute (1955) Family diet and health in pre-war Britain, Dunfermline, Carnegie United

Kingdom Trust

For a more comprehensive list of surveys see : D J Oddy (1977) ‘An investigation into patterns of food consumption in Britain 1914-1940’ SSRC End of Project Report HR3170.

Main Surveys supervised by Paton, Cathcart and Orr (handout)

Dietary Survey Methodology 1: “Man Value” Scales (handout)

Atwater (From Lindsay 1913)

Lusk (from Cathcart and Murray 1931)

Cathcart & Murray new scale 1931

Cathcart & Murray study results 1931

Man 1.0 Man: 1.0 Man: 1.0 Man: 1.0

Woman 0.8 Woman: 0.83 Woman: 0.83 Woman: 0.70

Boy 14-16: 0.8 Boy ≥ 13: 1.0 Boy ≥ 14: 1.0 Boy ≥ 14: 0.78

Girl 14-16: 0.8 Girl ≥ 13: 0.83 Girl ≥ 14: 0.83 -

Child 10-13: 0.6 Child 10-13: 0.83 Child 12-14: 0.9 -

Child 6-9: 0.5 Child 6-10: 0.60 Child 10-12: 0.8 Child 10-12: 0.68

Child 2-5: 0.4 Child 0-7: 0.50 Child 8-10: 0.7 Child 8-10: 0.7

Child<2: 0.3 Child 6-8: 0.6 Child 6-8: 0.46

Child 3-6: 0.5 Child 3-6: 0.4

Child 2-3: 0.4 Child 2-3: 0.31

Child 1-2: 0.3 Child 1-2: 0.28

Child 0-1: 0.2 -

The final column is based on the actual distribution of food in five families

Dietary Surveys methodologies 2: Requirements (handout)

• Paton et al 1902, 1913: 3500 Cals per ‘man’ (Atwater’s moderately active)

• Paton et al 1926: City slum child on 2600 per ‘man’ per day grows after 18 months as fast as country children. Lusk’s standard of 3000 might be reduced to 2500-2600.

• Cathcart 1931: suggest ‘that all families be classified on an arbitrary 2,500 Cal. Scale, and that in the case of manual workers a special addition be made to the male parent’s allowance’

• Orr 1936: man values abandoned in favour of ‘a per head basis calculated on the requirements of children, adolescents, and adults, and weighted according to the distribution of these in the total population’. Average per head 2810 Cals. (Stiebeling’s optimal requirements, included requirements for other nutrients)

• Rowett 1955: used scales devised by the Institute in 1937 and the BMA 1950 scales

A page from: Report upon the Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in the City of Glasgow (1913)

Examples of allusions to the capacity / effectiveness of parents

• ‘The household consists of ... an Irishman ... the mother also Irish ... and four children ... The house has two rooms. It is dirty and ill-kept. The table is always littered with crumbs, and tea, and dirty crockery ... The meals are irregular. The children drink tea five or six times a-day, and get a piece of bread whenever they ask for it ... Things are bought in small quantities ...’ (Edinburgh 1902 report)

Extract from ‘A study of social and economic factors in the causation of rickets’,

• ‘Twenty-nine percent of the mothers of the markedly rachitic children were careless. They were not wilfully neglected, but still the children did not receive sufficient attention. Either the children were not kept clean, their feeding appeared to be irregular and unsatisfactory, or they were allowed to sit for hours at a time on a cold floor or chair ...’

Extract from: Studies in nutrition; an enquiry into the diets of families in Cardiff and Reading’ (1932):

‘Smallness of income is only partially responsible. Far more important on the whole than the size of the income is improvidence on the part of one or both parents or simply general incapacity.’

An example of the data presented in ‘A dietary survey in terms of actual foodstuffs consumed’ (1936)

St Andrews data: Groups: I Professional; II Intermediate; III Shopkeepers; IV Skilled workers; V Unskilled workers; VI Unemployed; VII Mother and young family

Extract from ‘An enquiry into the diet of families in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’ (1940)

Edward Cathcart, Regius Professor of Physiology Glasgow

Typical graph in John Boyd Orr, of Food, Health and Income (1936) showing inadequate nutrient intakes in lower income groups

Screenshots from Enough to Eat? (1936) (view at BFI screenonline)

http://www.bris.ac.uk/social-community-medicine/media/boyd-orr/family-diet-health.pdf

Areas covered by the Carnegie Survey (handout)

Rough list of dietary survey material in Rowett Research Institute archives (handout)

Mellanby / Orr on Vitamins/Minerals and infectionsHopkins on ‘partial deficiencies’

Mellanby: ‘nothing has been more prominent in recent work … than the part played by correct feeding in increasing the individual resistance to infection ... I need only allude to the recent accumulation of facts showing the importance of vitamin A in increasing the resistance of the animal ...’

E. Mellanby, ‘Duties of the State in Relation to the Nation's Food Supply’, British Medical Journal, 1927

Orr: ‘The influence which long-continued deficiency of mineral matter … may have upon the incidence of disease, due to microbic infection, is well worthy of consideration …’

J. B. Orr, ‘The importance of Mineral Matter in Nutrition’, Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland , 1923

Hopkins: ‘it may be said ... beri-beri or pellegra or any diseases like them are unknown in this country; and scurvy is … very rare. But disturbances in health may exist without arriving at the extreme stage when the appearance of a severe set of symptoms leads to the recognition of actual disease.’

F. G. Hopkins, ‘The Practical Importance of Vitamins’, British Medical Journal, 1919

First appearances of ‘protective foods’ in the medical weeklies (handout)

BMJ 1922 editorial :

... diets should be supplemented by vitamin-rich foods, of which the most important are milk and milk products, green vegetables, and fruit-substances which McCollum designates as “protective” foods.

Lancet 1923: on a paper by Dr Harold Scurfield, MoH for Sheffield on the nutritional value of watercress:

There was just the danger that people would get sick of the talk about vitamins before they had absorbed the comparatively simple teaching of the newer nutrition- viz., that they needed to include more of the “protective foods” - i.e., milk, green vegetables, and fruits-in their dietaries.

First uses of ‘protective foods’ The Times and Hansard (handout)

We are being reminded that milk is a perfect food, that it is rich in vitamins, and that it is the only suitable nourishment for young children or suckling babies; it is also a very useful food for adults, and we are doing all that we can to see that this country produces good, pure milk at a cheap price. This food is so valuable that it has been called one of the "protective" foods, the other being green vegetables, because it does not matter how unsuitable or peculiar the diet of an individual may be, or however much a food crank he may be, provided he includes milk and green vegetables in his diet, he will not go far wrong.

The Times 31 January 1930

Hansard 15 May 1928

MilkH Corry Mann, Diets For Boys During The School Age. MRC Special Report 1926.

J B Orr, ‘Milk consumption and the growth of school-children’, Lancet 1928;i: 202-3.

‘A memorandum on the Nutritive Value of Milk by the Advisory Committee on Nutrition appointed by the Minister of Health and the Secretary of

State for Scotland’, London, HMSO, 1936

See references to works by Peter Atkins and others in the handout

The First Ad in The Times using ‘vitamines’ – for Glaxo baby milk(Times, 9 Feb 1920, p. 8f)

Times, 3/9/25, 7a

Times, 30 Jan1928, p. 11e

Times, 18/10/28, 20a

See references to works by Sally Horrocks and others in the handout

Hopkins on practical application of vitamins in medicine

“If the practitioner, when considering whether diet may not be the cause of ill‑health has in his mind the idea of specific deficiencies he will no longer reject the possibility when general underfeeding or ill digestion alone have been excluded. Realising that details must be considered, he will, in my opinion, be able to ascribe more to diet than hitherto, and at the same time extend his list of cases diagnosed ...”

F. G. Hopkins, ‘Recent Advances in Science in Relation to Practical Medicine and the Nutritional Requirement of the

Body’, Lancet 1921

Times Thursday, Oct 17, 1929; pg. 12; Issue 45336; col A

Times Wednesday, Oct 30, 1929; pg. 8; Issue 45347; col G

Some references (handout)

P J Atkins Liquid Materialities 2010P J Atkins ‘The pasteurisation of England: the science, culture and health implications of milk processing, 1900-

1950’ in Smith and PhillipsL M Barnett, ‘The People’s League of Health and the campaign against bovine tuberculosis in the 1930s’ in Smith

and PhillipsR. Duffet The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War 2012S M Horrocks ‘Nutrition science and the food and pharmaceutical industries in inter-war Britain’ in Smith 1997S M Horrocks ‘The Business of Vitamins: Nutrition Science and the Food Industry in Inter-war Britain’ in

Kamminga and CunninghamH Kamminga ‘”Axes to grind”: popularising the science of vitamins, 1920s and 1930s’ in Smith and PhillipsH Kamminga and A Cunningham The Science and Culture of Nutrition 1840-1940 1995F McKee ‘The popularisation of milk as a beverage during the 1930s’ in Smith 1997D F Smith ‘The Social Construction of Dietary Standards: The British Medical Association - Ministry of Health

Advisory Committee on Nutrition Report of 1934’, in D. Maurer and J. Sobal Eating Agendas Food and Nutrition as Social Problems 1995

D F Smith ‘The early institutional and scientific development of the Rowett Research Institute’ in A Adam, D F Smith, and F Watson To the Greit Support and Advancement of Helth 1996

D F Smith Nutrition in Britain: Science, scientists and politics in the twentieth century 1997D F Smith and J Phillips Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century 2000D F Smith ‘The Carnegie Survey: background and intended impact’, in A Fenton Order and Disorder 2000D F Smith ‘The quest for a nutritional El Dorado: efforts to demonstrate dietary impacts upon resistance to

infectious disease in the 1920s and 30s’ in E Neswald, U Thoms and D Smith Setting Standards (working title) 2013?

D F Smith and M Nicolson ‘Nutrition, Education, Ignorance and Income: A Twentieth-Century Debate’ in Kamminga and Cunningham

D F Smith and M Nicolson ‘The “Glasgow School” of Paton, Findlay and Cathcart: Conservative Thought in Chemical Physiology, Nutrition and Public Health’ Social Studies in Science 1989