POWER OF VITAMINS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5140, 17 June 1927, Page 4

POWER OF VITAMINS.

AID TO LONGEVITY. EXPLANATION OF IMPROVED DIET Vitamins have the power to promote longevity, according to bhe results of experiments at Columbia University, on which a report was made by Dr. Henry C. Sherman, Professor of Chemistry. Improved diet, with ample supplies of vitamins, was found to. lengthen the lives of rats and to produce earlier maturity and later senility. The special significance of vitamins and enzymes is that they make the oxidation of foodstuffs proceed fast enough to supply energy at the rate needed for all life processes, according to Professor Sherman. The benefits of improved diet should have equally good results for human beings as for animals according to the chemist, who said : — • “There is no reason to doubt and ample reason to believe that similar improvement in nutrition, with resulting increase of vitality and higher degree of health, with longer life, and especially longer duration of the prime of life, can be realised in human experience by a like improvement of the food, even though the original food supply is already adequate according to current standards.” RESULTS OF TESTS. Describing the- results of nutrition tests, he said : “Grains alone do not suffice for the normal nutrition of mammals, such as human beings, cattle, swine, or rats. Excellent results can, however, be obtained by the feeding of the same grains adequately supplemented by milk. “In view of the place of each of these types of food in nature, it is of much scientific, as well a.« economic, interest to know in what quantitative proportion must milk be consumed along with grain in order that the mixture may constitute a food supply adequate to meet all the heeds of animal nutrition.

“Experimentally it was found that a mixture of one-sixth dried wholemilk and five-sixths ground whole wheat (Diet A) was adequate, for it supported growth and reproduction generation after generation in the experimental animals (rats) fed exclusively upoh it ,which is a rigorous test of the adequacy of a food supply. But a mixture of the same articles of food with the milk in the- higher proportion, ' one-third dried whole milk, and tjvo-thirds ground whole wheat (Diet B), proved to be better in that it induced improved nutrition and a higher degree of health. “This was manifested in many ways. Growth was more rapid on Diet B than on Diet A, and more economical in that there was greater gain in body weight per 1000' calorfes of food consumed. BETTER RESULTS FROM ONE DIET “Those on Diet B maintained a somewhat larger size at all ages, and what is doubtless more significant of a higher degree of health, iiey showed both earlier maturity and'a later onset of senility, so that the prime of life was extended in both directions and became very materially longer. “Further evidence of increaked vitality was shown in the greater success of the females ip the rearing of their young, as they were ,-able to raise both larger numbers and a larger per centage of families dying out was greatlj' decreased, and the young made a more rapid growth when the mothers were on the better diet, even though the number of young being reared was larger. “Each of these evidences of better nutrition and a higher degree of health and vitality, induced through improvement of a diet which was already adequate, was even more distinct in the second generation than in the first. BROAD FIELD IS OPEN. “ Exact scientific research makes it clear that between the adequate and the optional in nutrition there lies a "broad field for chemical investigation which promises, when cultivated by rigorously quantitative methods: — careful quantitative chemical experiments continued over long periods upon large numbers of laboratory animals —to prove fruitful of results alike to our chemical understanding of life processes and . our ability, to control and improve them.” Professor Sherman said that if the food was suitable, the body would make its own enzymes, but in general the body did not m.nke the vitamin, but obtained it from the food.