Observations on the excretion of vitamin C in human urine

Abstract

The daily excretion is variable for different persons but for the same person strikingly uniform, not disturbed by even considerable variations in the vitamin C intake until very high doses are repeated. But the reducing capacity of urine increases nearly 3 times by changing from a normal to a high meat diet without any increase in the vitamin C intake. A high egg and milk diet did not increase the vitamin C output. The possibility that urine under high meat diets may contain reducing substances other than ascorbic acid has been examined but the evidence is generally in favor of the view that even on high meat diets the greater part of the reducing substance of urine is ascorbic acid. It has been suggested that a high meat diet favors the excretion of vitamin C by way of urine.