This is Vitamin Shoppes
Written by Dominic Bowen Tuesday, 10 May 2011 08:58
Thiamine, or vitamin B1, was the 1st vitamin to be discovered . Traditionally, brown or multi grain rice was a basic food in many Oriental nations. The oils contained in the germ of multi grain rice or wheat can go rancid quite quickly, particularly when exposed to air ( as when compressed into flour ) and stored at 70 degrees. So whole grains have a somewhat restricted shelf-life ( which can be extended by sealing them in an airproof container and refrigerating them ).
Therefore, in an effort to increase the shelf-life of rice, in the 1800s, the Germans perfected rice milling machines which stripped the bran and germ from rice yielding white rice. Advertising of that era convinced people who could afford it this new white rice was an improved food to be sought after. This also was an age of conquest for EU races and while European colonists in Asian areas adopted the rice-eating habits of the indigenous peoples, they preferred to eat socially-acceptable, dear, white rice rather than the cheap brown rice consumed by the local poor folks. Curiously these white settlers and navy personel in the Orient often came down with an illness called beriberi that the poor folks didn't get. All sorts of fascinating reasons for this were proposed, but almost all had in common the assumption that beriberi was caused by a bacterium. This was in the height of Louis Pasteur's famous work on bacteria, so all kinds of illnesses were all of a sudden being attributed to bacterial causes, including beriberi. Indications of beriberi, plenty of which are neurological, include fatigue, irritation, poor memory, sleeping disturbances, anorexia, intestinal pain and bowel obstruction, nerve issues like burning sensations in the feet, calf muscle cramps and weakness, and other symptoms.
Vitamin Shoppes Because folks thought that beriberi was due to a bacterium, this disease was thought to be transferable, and folks who contracted it were isolated from well folk. There had been much research being conducted to try to find the pathogen folks thought caused the disease and thus, a treatment for the disease.
Vitamin Shoppes In the 1890s there was an epidemic of beriberi among the Dutch colonists in Java ( yes, there really is a country by that name ). Deep in the jungles of Java, the Dutch had established a surgery and research lab for beriberi patients. The doctor who ran this facility was Dr. Christian Eijkman. For other research that was being conducted, the lab also kept a flock of ordinary, healthy chickens. At 1 time when supplies were low, the staff ran out of the inexpensive, brown rice the chickens were eating, and reluctantly decided to spend and feed the good white rice to the chickens until they could get more of the brown rice. This situation apparently lasted for a while, and the staff started to notice the chickens were showing symptoms like the leading indications of the beriberi patients, to the great trouble of all who considered this to be a very contagious illness. Ultimately somebody discovered that the good white rice was being wasted on the chickens, and the order was passed along to get them back onto inexpensive brown rice. To the amazement of all, when returned to a diet comprised of brown rice, the chickens got better. Primarily based on this proof, Dr. Eijkman proposed that beriberi was a nutritive deficiency, not caused by a micro-organism, and that something in the rice bran impedes beriberi.
People were so certain that beriberi had to be due to a bacterium that they wouldn't accept Eijkman's theory, and he was relieved of his commitments and sent back home.
Vitamin Shoppes In 1911, Casimir Funk, a Polish analyst working in London, isolated and concentrated a substance from rice polish ( bran ) which cured beriberi in a pigeon. Funk determined that chemically, this substance belonged to the category of organic molecules known as amines amd it was critical to a healthy life, so he called it a vitamine. This chemical was subsequently named thiamine. We now recognise a bunch of vitamins ( note that the e had been dropped ), almost all of which are not amines. .