PROTEIN COMES INTO ITS OWN

Abstract

The science of nutrition as I have watched it develop through the years has presented a constantly changing picture. According to the trend of research and the appeal to the imagination made by the discoveries of the day, first one coloration and then another has dominated the picture. This development can roughly be divided into five periods, all culminating today in a period of greater appreciation of protein. THE ENERGY ERA First, there was the energy era, the day of the great pioneer students of metabolism, of Liebig and Voit, and then of Rubner and Atwater, Friedrich Müller and Graham Lusk. The brilliant discoveries of that period had their beginnings in Paris with Lavoisier in the investigations which led him to the conclusion that all life is a chemical process. The scientists who followed Lavoisier, notably those of the Munich school, were primarily interested in the chemical changes that take