TEST
HISTORY OF VITAMINS SUPPLEMENTS
Lecturer:
OK, we’ve looked at the history of vitamin supplements and thought
about why people take
them. We’ve also considered the reasons why some health professionals are critical of the
vitamin supplement industry. Now work with a partner and discuss the key issues.
Lucy:
Sam, shall we work together?
Sam:
Sure. Let’s go over the history.
Lucy:
Well, before the 1900s, when someone became weak and tired, and it wasn’t
clear why,
doctors assumed they were suffering from an infection – like a virus.
Sam:
Or they’d been in contact with something poisonous or harmful.
Q21
Something they’d
handled or eaten. Doctors had no other explanation for it.
Lucy:
But in the early 1900s, that changed. That researcher in the US -Joseph Goldberger, –
he
realised people who basically lived off corn – they were getting ill because they weren’t
eating anything else.
Q22
Sam:
Exactly. And other researchers were realising the same thing. Like, in places where people
only ate white rice – they were suffering from a disease called beriberi.
Lucy:
So the researchers concluded that there must be something missing – that the stuff some
people were eating had no nutritional value. And from there, researchers
began to identify
vitamins – like A and B – for the first time.
Sam:
A huge scientific breakthrough.
Lucy:
So doctors, the public, ...everyone got to hear about vitamins – first that they existed, and
second, you needed them to be healthy.
Sam:
But it was governments that were really worried about vitamin deficiency. Certainly in the US
and in the UK, at least.
Lucy:
What do you mean?
Sam:
Well,
