Helen A. Hunscher

An evaluation of maternal nitrogen and mineral needs during embryonic and infant development

Abstract 1. 1. Evidence from an analysis of various types of quantitative chemical and physiologic data on the nutritive demands of fetal and maternal metabolism indicates that a specific scientific dietary dictum may be advantageous during reproduction in endowing the child with nutritional stability, protecting the maternal tissues from metabolic loss, and providing for a storage to meet all needs of maternity. From an evaluation of maternal nitrogen and mineral needs during embryonic and infant development, it seems advantageous to provide a daily supply of from 70 to 100 gm. of protein, and a minimum of 1.6 gm. of calcium, 2 gm. of phosphorus, 0.3 gm. of magnesium, and 20 mg. of iron. 2. 2. From available scientific evidence, human lactation requires a greater amount of all food nutrients than does pregnancy. 3. 3. The necessity of fortifying the maternal diet with sufficient amounts of vitamins is indicated.

The influence of a daily serving of spinach or its equivalent in oxalic acid upon the mineral utilization of children

Summary 1. One hundred and twenty-one metabolic balances for each nitrogen,calcium, and phosphorus have been made on ten growing children. The individual physiologic response characteristic for each child on the different dietary regimens has been determined for sixty to eighty-five successive days by five-day balance periods. Each child served as his own control. 2. Control periods of twenty-five days on the ordinary mixed dietof common foods showed the children to be storing nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The storage rates of these elements were not significantly altered by the daily consumption of 100 grams of spinach; more-over, they were compatible with normal variations observed in growth. 3. No cumulative toxic or untoward effects could be determined either in the average daily retentions, or in the progressive storage curves of nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus either during the period of consumption of spinach and oxalic acid or during the control period immediately following. 4. The supplementation of an already adequate diet with a generous serving of spinach daily, even for as long as forty consecutive days, did not change the rate of calcium storage in growing children when their calcium intake was adequate to cover the precipitating effect of the oxalic acid and provide for their fluctuating growth needs. 5. The practical conclusion drawn from the data recorded herein is that spinach is not harmful even in servings of 100 grams daily, at least in preadolescent children, but because of its richness in vitamins, minearls, especially iron, and other nutritive essentials it should retain its customary place along with other green leafy vegetables.

Variability of Metabolic Response of Different Children to a Given Intake of Calcium

As the metabolic balance studies on the “so-called normal” adults 1 , 2 and 22 children 3 , 4 as well as the growth observations on 530 infants 5 have progressed in this laboratory over several years we have grown more and more impressed with the wide physiological variations found. These fluctuations are evident not only among individuals of the same age, body size and living under the same environmental conditions but of the same individual when kept under constant conditions and observed continuously over, not days, but weeks. Obviously, it becomes necessary to build up some knowledge as to how much variation one may expect to find in a healthy individual living under highly standardized conditions before it is possible to interpret the degree of differences of results found under specific experimental conditions or in disease. Moreover, in the case of children, it is exceedingly important to build up some concept of the changes that occur incident to growth and development alone, before one is able to interpret satisfactorily the significant effect of specific food or other amenable factors on the metabolism of the child. To illustrate not only the degree of variability that may occur among healthy individuals of like age and body size but also the increments and decrements that occur in metabolism from time to time as the observations progress the present report records the calcium balances for only 25 to 65 consecutive days of 6 of the 22∗ typically healthy children who were maintained on simple diets of 70 to 100 calories per kilo of body weight per day appropriate for the age and size of the child and approximately uniform in mineral and nitrogen content. The dietary furnished one gram of calcium per day for each child.

Influence of raw banana and apple upon disappearance of complex carbohydrates from the alimentary tracts of normal children.

The disappearance of unavailable carbohydrates from the alimentary tracts of 9 normal children, ages 5 to 8 years, was determined during pre-experimental periods of 30 to 55 consecutive days for each child and experimental periods of 20 to 50 consecutive days immediately following for each subject. The diets of the children were composed of the same foods but the quantities varied according to the size and activity of the individual. All of the children received an additional 100 grams of banana per day in the experimental regimen although the added fruit was substituted for bread and cereal in the diets of 5 subjects and one subject received the additional banana plus more potato, bread and butter in the experimental period diet.