History 2158A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: William Prout, Herbert Hoover, Nutrition
30 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
The Calorie and the Rise of Nutritional Science
●What is a Calorie?
○The amount of energy that is needed to raise one kilogram of water one degree celsius
●Scientification of Food
○Condense food into hard figures
○William Prout (1785-1850)
■An english doctor and chemist
■1857 proposed classification of things that make up food into carbohydrates and other stuff
○Justus von Liebeg (1903-1873)
■Father of organic chemistry
■Very wrong about literally everything, but he was looking at it from a chemical process
■Animal Chemistry
(1842)
■Research on the Chemistry of Food
(1847)
○Wilbur O. Atwater (1844-1907)
■Calorimeter used to balance the food intake and energy output in humans
●By measuring oxygen uptake in the laboratory during rest and different modes of
physical activity, scientists can accurately estimate the body’s total energy production or
calorie expenditure.
●Enormous success, super popular
●Prove that laws of thermodynamics and heat exchanges work same for people as animals
●Prove that eating was governed by mathematical laws
○Without reference to taste, culture or social context
●Established a numeric relationship between food and human activity then creates
scientific terms to help define that relationship
○Regulating the Social
■Atwater wasn’t immune to adding value judgements to his own work
●“The destruction of the poor is their own providence”
●Reaaaally hated poor people
■The calorie gave governments a new tool to supervise the welfare of populations
■You can get the proper balance in your diet through social regulation of food
●Allowed governments to tell people what to eat because “science”
○First World War
■Food panics in cities - governments realized that they didn’t know how much food was needed for
cities or countries - they used Atwater’s science to estimate
■Regulation of food consumption became important responsibility of state
●Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)
●Americans at home had to eat less wheat to give it all to soldiers
●Watching calories became a patriotic duty
○Calories and Empire
■Calories and nutritional science used to justify empires
○Reshaping the World
■League of Nations report on nutrition
○Counting Calories
■Lulu Hunt Peters (1873-1930)
●Promoted the idea of counting calories to lose weight
● “You should know and also use the word calorie as frequently, or more frequently, than
you use the words foot, yard, quart, [or] gallon…Instead of saying one slice of bread, or a
piece of pie, you will say 100 calories of bread, 350 calories of pie”.
Document Summary
The calorie and the rise of nutritional science. The amount of energy that is needed to raise one kilogram of water one degree celsius. 1857 proposed classification of things that make up food into carbohydrates and other stuff. Very wrong about literally everything, but he was looking at it from a chemical process. Calorimeter used to balance the food intake and energy output in humans. By measuring oxygen uptake in the laboratory during rest and different modes of physical activity, scientists can accurately estimate the body"s total energy production or calorie expenditure. Prove that laws of thermodynamics and heat exchanges work same for people as animals. Prove that eating was governed by mathematical laws. Without reference to taste, culture or social context. Established a numeric relationship between food and human activity then creates scientific terms to help define that relationship. Atwater wasn"t immune to adding value judgements to his own work.
