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A Study of Vitamin C Nutrition in a Group of School Children

Part II. Dietary Evaluation¹

One Figure

Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, Orono

A study of vitamin C nutrition, as judged by plasma ascorbic acid values and by oral conditions reported elsewhere has been amplified in this report by a study of the diet records and by determinations of total ascorbic acid in the foods consumed by the children under observation.

Analyses of seventy-six fall and sixty-three spring diet records showed that only one child in seven attained the minimum dietary standard of one good vitamin C food daily.

Storage losses were demonstrated in potatoes, the chief source of vitamin C in the dietaries observed. The ascorbic acid values of raw Green Mountain potatoes decreased from 0.17 mg. per gram in the fall to 0.11 mg. per gram in the spring.

Losses during cooking, according to the techniques employed in the region, were as follows: for potatoes, 27 to 55%; for cabbages, 46 to 67%; for rutabagas, 14 to 50%; and for fiddlehead greens, 29 to 56%.

The findings of vitamin C undernutrition in which 45 and 63% of the children examined showed plasma ascorbic acid values of less than 0.40 mg. per cent, while 32 and 51% of the children showed oral inflammation, are here shown to be paralleled by markedly inadequate vitamin C intakes in 58 and 40% of the dietaries examined. The large losses of vitamin C attributed to the effects of storage and poor cooking methods emphasize the dietary relation to the clinical symptoms.

Manuscript received 15 November 1940.