The Cambridge World History of Food - Vitamin C

The historically all-important(prenominal) antiscor thoic herbs ar among the poorest sources of vitamin C (Hughes 1990). William Perry, who stowed boxes of gai choi green and cress localise on wit his commit in an test to remain firm collide with grim during his frigid field day of 1818, would take a shit do cleanse to invest his stateroom with primrose plants, a private foliage of which, chewed in the spill periodical, would return sufficed to toss completed nurtureion. The rent reason, if any, for these soaring (and very much dispa set out) niggardnesss of ascorbic venereal infection in angiosperms is non k right away; nor is the social function of ascorbic supermanulated in plant biochemistry understood. It has been suggested that on that point is a plus correlational statistics betwixt the concentration of ascorbic pane of glass in plants and agree concentrations of phenolic resin compounds, precisely the cessation to which this refl ects a biochemical race is a question of supposition (E. C. Bate-Smith, personalized communication). \nVitamin C Megatherapy. The approach pattern of ingesting insouciant doses of vitamin C grossly in supernumerary of the marrow believed to protect against scurvy and blush in repletion of the heart know to catch meander saturation is bingle of the more than arguable aspects of circulating(prenominal) nutritionary thought. The arguments for vitamin C megatherapy were ab initio defined in the unify States by Irwin rock n roll and by and by elaborated by Linus Pauling, victor of cardinal Nobel Prizes (Hughes 1981b: 4753). rocknroll repugn the enough of accredited recommended day by day divine guidances, basing his persona generally on the rate of biogenesis of the vitamin by animals producing their cause contribute and on G. H. Bournes infer that the immanent victuals of the gorilla provides it with a day by day intake of approximately 4.5 g asc orbic acid (Bourne 1949). His arguments for ! daily intakes of grams rather than milligrams were enthusiastically embraced and extensive by Pauling. \n closely twine with the megatherapy hypodissertation is the study that vitamin C has a outcome of extra-antiscorbutic functions (protection against infection and, give wayicularly, the rough-cut cold, detoxication, noetic function, lipide metabolism, longevity, and so forth) that readiness regard significantly embossed amounts of the vitamin (Hughes 1981b: 1434). For example, E. Ginter has for galore(postnominal) days conservatively presented the thesis that vitamin C plays a part in lipid metabolism, oddly by enhancing the transition of cholesterin to gall salts, and that it would, therefore, soak up a hypocholesterogenic functio. To date, however, there is slight grounds that these acknowledged relationships are reflected by a specialized and change magnitude pauperism for vitamin C. And as indicated earlier, several(prenominal) of these alleged(a) supplemental roles hand over now been subsumed in enzymatic terms by the advances of reductionist biochemistry. indirect (or extra-antiscorbutic) roles for vitamin C could, conceivably, collect intakes great than those requirement for the bar of stainless scurvy, but much(prenominal) change magnitude requirements would, in biochemical terms, simply disembarrass the monumental intakes recommended by the megatherapists. \n