Vitamin C, 1981 The Mysterious Redox-System A Trigger of Life?

Parents and ancestors are always important: they endow us with a genetic inheritance for better or for worse, for the balanced diet, for overfeeding or for starvation. Some of us die young, some succumb in middle age to chronic disease, others join the gero­ cracy - the healthy, happy people in their 70s, 80s or even 90s. Genetic inheritance, nurture and nutrition, all play their part. The nurture and nutrition are our own responsibility; we make our choices and live with the consequences. This book is dedicated to the students of nutrition who may be interested in the subject for themselves alone, for their families, for teaching and counselling others and for research and investi­ gations. We found it necessary to include basic information in order to support some of the statements we make or advice we give; this material appears either in the main body of the text or as footnotes. If the student of nutrition is familiar with the basic con­ cepts, these sections can be skipped. At the end of the book we have included appendices, with examples of daily menus pro­ viding adequate vitamin C, an extensive bibliography, a glossary and an index. We have drawn up a food table of the vitamin C content of specific foods and described the point-system which is a ready-reckoner for approximate calculation of the vitamin C content of foods and diets.

1 Interactions, interdependence and interrelationships of vitamin C in human nutrition and metabolism.- 2 How was vitamin C discovered?.- 2.1 Scurvy-historical background.- 2.2 Isolation of the antiscorbutic factor.- 2.3 Chemical and structural formulae and synthesis of vitamin C.- 2.4 Why cannot the human organism make its own vitamin C?.- 2.5 Naming names - vitamin C versus ascorbic acid.- 3 What is vitamin C?.- 3.1 Structure and physicochemical properties.- 3.2 Biochemical reactivity of the vitamin C system.- 4 How is vitamin C determined?.- 4.1 Assay of vitamin C in foods.- 4.2 Assay of vitamin C in human tissues and body fluids.- 5 Where is vitamin C found? - vitamin C in foods.- 5.1 Vitamin C in fruit and vegetables.- 5.2 Vitamin C in foods of animal origin.- 5.3 Standardization, restoration, enrichment or fortification of foods with L-ascorbic acid.- 5.4 Use of L-ascorbic acid as an antioxidant in foods.- 5.5 Assessment of food intake for vitamin C.- 5.6 Why food in preference to ascorbic acid tablets or crystalline ascorbic acid?.- 6 Vitamin C in the human body.- 6.1 Where does it go?.- 6.2 How does vitamin C function?.- 6.3 What does vitamin C do?.- 7 Case studies of scurvy and hypovitaminosis C in Australia.- 7.1 Mental performance of old men in a geriatric hospital.- 7.2 Mental performance of old men receiving meals-on-wheels.- 7.3 Precipitation of scurvy in an old woman.- 7.4 Aboriginal families and scurvy baby.- 7.5 Aboriginal women of childbearing age.- 7.6 Australian children from socioeconomic stress groups.- 7.7 Adult Australians in varying degrees of health.- 8 How much vitamin C do we humans need? - dietary allowances.- 8.1 Scurvy prevention versus tissue saturation - the great debate.- 8.2 Dietary allowances for vitamin C based on scurvy prevention.- 8.3 Dietary allowances for vitamin C based on the concept of approaching tissue saturation.- 8.4 The yo-yo of dietary allowances for vitamin C.- 9 Assessment of vitamin C status.- 9.1 Clinical, dietary and biochemical assessment.- 9.2 Correlations between clinical, dietary and biochemical vitamin C status in adults.- 9.3 Sex and age difference - intake and plasma levels of vitamin C.- 10 Vitamin C, modern lifestyle and hazards.- 10.1 Vitamin C in smoking and heavy drinking.- 10.2 Vitamin C and drugs.- 10.3 Vitamin C and climate.- 11 Dietary recommendations for the healthy man and woman of the 1980s.- 12 Ascorbic acid as a therapeutic agent - some controversial issues.- 12.1 Ascorbic acid and the common cold.- 12.2 Ascorbic acid and cancer.- 12.3 Ascorbic acid and atherosclerosis.- 12.4 Ascorbic acid and other diseases.- 12.5 Ascorbic acid and surgical trauma.- 12.6 Megadoses of ascorbic acid.- 13 Vitamin C and future research.- 14 Appendices.- 14.1 Summary of the fluorimetric determination of vitamin C in blood plasma.- 14.2 Examples of daily menus providing adequate vitamin C.- 15 References.- 15.1 Special references to vitamin C and the common cold.- 16 Abbreviations, Symbols and Glossary.- 16.1 Abbreviations.- 16.2 Symbols.- 16.3 Glossary.