Historically Important Contributions of Women in the Nutrition Society: the American Society for Nutritional Sciences Diamond Jubilee Symposium

Symposium: Historically Important Contributions of Women in the Nutrition Society: The American Society for Nutritional Sciences Diamond Jubilee Symposium

Contributions of Women Scientists in the U.S. to the Development of Recommended Dietary Allowances1,2

Alfred E. Harper3 Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

My assignment is to identify some of the major contribu- it was the first official action by which a government as- tions made by women scientists in the United States to de- sumed responsibility for protecting public health through velopment of our major dietary standard, the Recommended food regulations. Dietary Allowances (RDA). I shall focus mainly on the con- The first true dietary standard also was proposed in the tributions of Dr. Hazel Stiebeling and Dr. Lydia Roberts but, as United Kingdom and we must concede that it was proposed by Downloaded from this is a history of nutrition symposium, I shall say a little first a man, a scientist and physician, Dr. Edward Smith (1819– about the early development of dietary recommendations and 1874). During an economic depression in 1862, he responded standards. to a request by the Privy Council for information as to how much food would be needed per person to prevent starvation Development of dietary standards (1). Smith calculated, from measurements he made of the amounts of carbon dioxide exhaled and nitrogen excreted by jn.nutrition.org The evolution of dietary standards has been best summa- individuals working on a treadmill, that 80 g of protein and rized by a woman scientist, Dr. Isabella Leitch. However, she 2800 kcal of energy per day from food sources would be was British, not American, so by rights her contributions do not fall within the scope of my assignment. Nonetheless, I am sufficient for a working man (2). This was the first dietary glad to have this opportunity to recognize her as the author of standard based on scientific principles. by guest on June 5, 2011 the most informative summary we have of the historical back- Because it was widely believed during the 19th century that ground of dietary recommendations and standards. Her review, a diet containing only proteins, energy sources and a few published in 1942 (1), includes references to several of Stie- minerals was nutritionally adequate, dietary recommendations beling’s papers and the first RDA publication. It is a classic were limited to energy sources and protein until after the from which most of us who have written about the subject of beginning of the 20th century (3) when evidence that foods dietary standards have borrowed freely. contained unidentified essential nutrients became generally The first formal action to institute a dietary recommen- accepted (4,5). dation as public policy, according to Leitch, was passage of During World War I (1914–1918), 70 to 80 g of protein the Merchant Seaman’s Act by the British Parliament in and 3000 kcal of energy were proposed as dietary standards for 1835. This act required that lemon juice be included in the the armed forces. These quantities for men, and scaled-down rations of sailors in the mercantile service as a measure for values for women and children, were accepted in the U.K. for preventing scurvy. This was not truly a dietary standard, but calculating food needs of the population (1). By this time, however, nutritional deficiency diseases had been discovered. Foods that prevented these diseases were called “protective” 1 Presented at the Experimental Biology meeting, April 11–15 2003, San foods (6). In order to ensure that diets would provide the Diego, CA. The symposium was sponsored by the American Society for Nutri- recently discovered essential nutrients, the British authorities tional Sciences (ASNS) and the ASNS History Committee. The proceedings are published as a supplement to The Journal of Nutrition. This supplement is the recommended that a considerable proportion of milk be in- responsibility of the guest editors to whom the Editor of The Journal of Nutrition cluded in the diets of children and a certain proportion of fresh has delegated supervision of both technical conformity to the published regula- fruits and leafy green vegetables be included in all diets. Later, tions of The Journal of Nutrition and general oversight of the scientific merit of each article. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, committees and are not attributable to the sponsors or the publisher, editor or editorial board of the League of Nations Health Organization began accumu- of The Journal of Nutrition. Guest Editors for the symposium publication are lating information about human requirements for minerals and Jacqueline Dupont, Florida State University and Patricia Swan, Iowa State Uni- versity. vitamins. They did not, however, propose dietary standards 2 The Third Annual Hazel K. Stiebeling Lecture sponsored by the Department that included the newly recognized essential nutrients but did of Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences, College of Human Sciences, Florida recommend that protective foods be included in diets. (They State University, Tallahassee, FL. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed. emphasized consumption of milk, leafy vegetables, eggs, fish E-mail: [email protected]. and organ meats.)

3698 H. K. STIEBELING AND L. J. ROBERTS 3699

the inﬂuence of vitamin D on calcium deposition in bone. She was awarded a PhD in chemistry by Columbia in 1928 for a thesis on methods for measuring tissue content of vitamins A and D. The results of these studies were evaluated using statistical methods. Careful attention to detail and statistical evaluation of results characterized Stiebeling’s work throughout her career. Two papers from these studies were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. At Sherman’s suggestion, Stiebeling took the civil service examination before ﬁnishing her graduate work, so that she might qualify for a position in a new research unit that was opening in the USDA Bureau of Home Economics. In 1930 she was offered, and accepted, an appointment as Head of a new Section on Food Economics in the Food and Nutrition Division of the Bureau. This was the beginning of a life-long career for her at the USDA. Soon after she began work at the USDA, Stiebeling undertook to design inexpensive diets that would prevent pellagra and that could serve as guides for low income families to prepare nutritionally adequate diets using home- produced foods. As part of this program, Stiebeling began

an extensive investigation of the nutritive value of diets in Downloaded from FIGURE 1 Hazel Katherine Stiebeling (Photograph courtesy of the the United States. She realized that a reliable standard ASNS Archives, Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt Medical Center, against which diets designed for the various USDA pro- Nashville, TN). grams could be evaluated for nutritional adequacy was sorely needed. In a 1933 publication on diet planning (9) she included a set of what she called “dietary allowances.”

Wars and economic depressions seem to have been the This, to the best of my knowledge, was the first use of this jn.nutrition.org main stimuli for development of dietary recommendations and term; also, it was the first dietary standard to include quan- standards. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, proposals titative values for several vitamins and minerals (calcium, made by Dr. Hazel Stiebeling and her colleagues at the USDA phosphorus, iron and vitamins A and C). The values were represented major advances in dietary standards. Before dis- based mainly on estimates of human requirements from cussing these, I shall introduce you to Dr. Stiebeling, a woman investigations in Sherman’s laboratory (7). by guest on June 5, 2011 scientist who contributed importantly to knowledge of diet In 1939 Stiebeling and Esther Phipard (10) expanded the composition, nutritional value of diets, dietary guidelines, and USDA dietary allowances to include thiamin and riboflavin especially to the concept and development of dietary standards (Table 1). They increased the number of age groups and they (7). proposed that to establish allowances, average requirements should be increased by 50% to allow for variability among the Hazel K. Stiebeling requirements of individuals in the population. Sherman and his associates (12) wrote in relation to this proposal, “The Hazel Katherine Stiebeling (Fig. 1) was born in 1896, in allowance of a margin of 50% above the average minimum for Haskins, Ohio. She grew up on a farm where she developed normal maintenance can now be given the clear definition it an interest in food and nutrition. In high school she studied has always needed. It is an estimate intended to cover indi- domestic science and became familiar with food and nutri- vidual variations of minimal nutritional need among appar- tion publications of the USDA. She acquired a keen inter- ently normal people. . . .” This concept has been basic in the est in the scientific aspects of domestic science and, after graduation, enrolled in a two-year program in Skidmore College. Her interest, she later wrote, “grew to real excite- TABLE 1 ment when I found [Dr. Henry] Sherman’s textbook ‘The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition’ (8), in the Skidmore Dietary allowances for adults1 library.” She comments that she read almost halfway through it at first sitting. Stielbing, 1933, 1939 NRC, 1941 After graduating from Skidmore, Stiebeling taught school for three years, then entered Columbia University Teachers’ Energy, kcal 2810 2775 College. Here she became an assistant in Foods and Nutrition Protein, g 68 66 Calcium, g 0.9 0.91 to Professor Mary Swartz Rose, whose contributions are dis- Phosphorus, g 1.22 — cussed elsewhere in this symposium. Stiebeling graduated with Iron, mg 13–14 12 a BS degree in 1919. Then, for several years she alternated Vitamin A, IU 5800 4696 between doing graduate work and teaching at Kansas State Vitamin B1, IU2 460 516 Teachers’ College. She completed her MA in nutrition in Vitamin C, mg 71 71 1924, after which she became a Research Fellow (1925–1930) Riboflavin, mg 1.74 2.3 Nicotinic acid, mg — 15.5 in chemistry with Sherman in the Graduate School of Colum- Vitamin D, IU — 210 bia University. She participated in several research projects during her graduate program, among them, basal metabolism 1 Ref. 11. of women, nutritional value of proteins in human subjects and 2 333 IU ϭ 1 mg. 3700 SYMPOSIUM development of dietary standards and allowances by the inter- national agencies–FAO and WHO–and by most national agencies. Before I proceed, I want to recognize Dr. Esther Phipard as another woman scientist, also with a PhD degree from Colum- bia, who contributed substantially to the development of dietary allowances. She also contributed greatly during her 30 years at the USDA to knowledge of food composition and, in conjunction with this, she served on two Food and Nutrition Board committees, one on food composition and the other on amino acids. During the period of 1935–1938 the League of Nations Health Organization encouraged member states to establish nutrition councils (2,13). In 1939 the Canadian Council on Nutrition proposed a Canadian Dietary Standard (14) that included values for calories, fat, protein, calcium, iron and vitamins A and D for various age-sex groups. Thus, by 1940 committees in the United Kingdom and those of the League of Nations were recommending diets that included protective foods and the USDA and the Canadian Bureau of Health were FIGURE 2 Lydia Jane Roberts (Photograph courtesy of the ASNS both using dietary standards or allowances for evaluating diets. Archives, Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nash-

In 1940 the NRC formed a Committee on Food and Nu- ville, TN). Downloaded from trition to advise the U.S. government on problems relating to national defense (15). At its first meeting the Committee undertook to develop a dietary standard for evaluating the nutritional quality of U.S. military and civilian diets. The journey by horse and buggy from Kalamazoo (6). She com- chairman, Dr. Russell Wilder, appointed three women scien- pleted high school there and after obtaining a two-year pre- tists attending the meeting. Dr. Helen S. Mitchell, Dr. Hazel liminary teaching certificate in 1899 she began to teach Stiebeling and Dr. Lydia Roberts as chair, to serve as a task school. This was the beginning of a teaching career that was to jn.nutrition.org force; he asked them to meet in the evening and present a last 66 years. In 1909 she qualified for the full teaching tentative standard in the morning. certificate and left for Dillon, Montana, where she taught But first, I have given a biographical sketch of Hazel Stie- school for another six years. While there she developed a major interest in the well-being of children, so, in 1915, she beling and will shortly do the same for Roberts, so would like by guest on June 5, 2011 now to say a few words about Helen S. Mitchell, the other left Montana to study diet and health at the University of member of the task force. She was born in Connecticut in Chicago. She graduated in 1917, Phi Beta Kappa, with a major 1895, graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1917 and in Home Economics. She earned her MS degree the following from Yale in 1921 with a doctorate in biochemistry. She year. taught physiology and nutrition at Battle Creek College in At this time the University of Chicago was unique in Michigan until 1935, then was appointed Research Professor offering graduate students in Home Economics an opportunity at the University of Massachusetts. In 1940 she went to the to work with children in a clinical setting. Lydia Roberts USDA as a consultant, then, in 1941 she became Principle worked in this setting. Here she developed a course in child Nutritionist at the Federal Security Agency, the agency feeding and undertook two surveys of nutritional status of through which the first version of the RDA was released. She children for the U.S. Children’s Bureau, one in Kentucky and was a member of the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) from one in Gary, Indiana. In 1919 as an assistant professor, she 1940 to 1945. Mitchell was senior author of the textbook, began a study of the nutritional needs of children for her PhD Nutrition in Health and Disease, which had been in print for 56 program. In 1927 she completed a book, Nutrition Work with years when she died in 1984. Children, based on her research. It was accepted as the disser- Dr. L.A. Maynard, a member of the Committee on Foods tation for her PhD degree and she was promoted to associate and Nutrition, reported (16) that the next morning the task professor. In 1928 her book was published and it was very force chaired by Roberts provided figures for energy and highly regarded. The 3rd edition was published in 1954, sev- nine nutrients to serve as an interim guide. Roberts empha- eral years after Roberts retired. sized, however, that before making a formal proposal for a dietary standard it would be necessary to evaluate all of the In 1930 Roberts was promoted to a full professorship and available information on human requirements for nutrients. was appointed Chair of the Home Economics Department. To accomplish this Wilder appointed a committee consist- Despite taking on administrative duties, she maintained her ing of Lela Booher, G. R. Cowgill, C. A. Elvehjem, C. G. research and teaching programs on the nutritional needs (en- King, E. W. McHenry and R. M. Wilder, with Lydia Roberts ergy, protein, minerals and vitamins) of children. In 1938 she as chair (15). received the Borden award of the Home Economics Associa- tion for these studies. She also accepted a number of outside obligations, among them an appointment to the NRC Com- Lydia J. Roberts mittee on Food and Nutrition, which subsequently became the FNB. Now, I should like to introduce you to Dr. Roberts, chair of As noted earlier, Roberts served as chair of the FNB com- the committee on dietary standards. Lydia Jane Roberts mittee that was to produce the initial set of “Recommended (1870–1965) (Fig. 2) was born in Michigan in 1879 and grew Dietary Allowances.” In overseeing the work of this commit- up in the town of Martin in a farming community about a day’s tee, which developed the process by which the RDA were H. K. STIEBELING AND L. J. ROBERTS 3701 established, Roberts made a major contribution. She empha- TABLE 3 sized throughout the necessity for a sound scientific basis for the allowances. She has described the process in two papers Women who participated as members of Recommended (17,18). It began with critical evaluation of all of the available Daily Allowances committees between 1941 and 1985 information on human requirements for nutrients. After that scientists who were studying requirements were asked to pro- Dates of vide additional information about nutrients with which they participation Name had had experience. Tentative RDA values were proposed on 1941–1945 Lydia J. Roberts, Chair the basis of this information; these were then submitted for Helen S. Mitchell review to the FNB. After the review, the estimates were Lela Booher reevaluated and resubmitted to all who had been involved in 1953–1957 Grace Goldsmith, the process. They were also presented for discussion at an open Chair meeting of the American Institute of Nutrition. After a final 1958–1963 Grace Goldsmith Margaret Ohlson revision and review by the Board, the values were adopted. 1968–1974 Roslyn Alfin-Slater The proposed RDA were released in 1941 in typescript form Doris Calloway which was published by the American Dietetic Association 1980–1985 Helen A. Guthrie (19). The full report was not published until 1943 (15). Hellen Linkswiler Roberts continued to chair the RDA Committee until after the first revision of the RDA bulletin was completed in 1945. Roberts referred to the process by which the RDA were estimated as “democratic.” She proposed that that was its 43 people (20). Thus the end product was actually the result of

strength. I think she should have called it a “scientific” process critical evaluation of the available information by a select Downloaded from because her criterion for a democratic procedure was that all group of the most knowledgeable scientists in that area. persons who had a basis for judgment concerning nutritional requirements had an opportunity to present their information Major contributions by Stiebeling and Roberts and participate in decisions. The list of participants included One problem I encountered in reviewing this topic is that nowhere in the records of the preliminary meetings, or in the reports of the process used in developing RDA (17,18), is there jn.nutrition.org TABLE 2 any elaboration of Stiebeling’s contribution. We know that Women who contributed information to the first she was the only member of the preliminary task force who had 1 had experience with “dietary allowances,” that she had formu- Recommended Dietary Allowances (19) lated a set of “dietary allowances” seven years earlier which by guest on June 5, 2011 Name Affiliation had been used extensively by the USDA, that the nutrients for which the FNB task force proposed tentative values were those Ruth Blair Dept. of Home Economics, University of for which Stiebeling had previously proposed values, that Chicago Stiebeling was acknowledged as one of the 43 contributors to Lela Booher U.S. Bureau of Home Economics, USDA the original Committee on Dietary Standards and that in 1941 Margaret Hessler Prof. of Nutr., University of Chicago she was a member of the FNB itself which reviewed in detail Brooks the work of the Committee on Dietary Standards. If you will Charlotte Chatfield U.S. Bureau of Home Economics, USDA Ruth Close American Medical Association, Chicago, IL allow me a little speculation, I believe that Stiebeling was so Martha Eliot U.S. Children’s Bureau, Washington, D.C. modest and self-effacing that she contributed her knowledge Elizabeth Knott Pediatrics Dept., University of Chicago without taking or being given credit for it. The similarity of Martha Koehne Dept. of Health, Columbus, OH the first set of RDA values to those proposed by Stiebeling and Eva Donaldson Dept. of Nutr., University of Minnesota, St. Paul Phipard is striking (Table 1). Leitch commented that the Hazel Hauk Foods and Nutr., Cornell University, Ithaca initial report of the FNB Committee brings the Stiebeling and Estelle Hawley Strong Mem. Hosp., University of Rochester, NY Phipard “standard into line with the most recent scientific Icie Macy Hoobler Children’s Fund of Michigan, Detroit investigations” (1). Helen Hunscher Dept. Home Economics, West. Res. University, Both Stiebeling and Roberts obviously made major contri- Cleveland butions to the development of the RDA. Nonetheless, many Grace MacLeod Dept. Nutr., Columbia University, NY others also contributed. Of the 43 scientists listed as contrib- Helen Mitchell Fed. Security Agency, Washington, D.C. uting information for the initial RDA values, 25 were women Ethel A. Martin Nutrition Service, National Dairy Council, Chicago (Table 2) (20). In addition (Table 3), several other women Hazel Munsell Columbia University, NY scientists have served on subsequent RDA Committees. They Agnes Fay Morgan Dept. Home Economics, University of all deserve much more than the brief mention they are being California, Berkeley given here. Julia Outhouse Prof. Nutr., University of Illinois, Urbana Thelma Porter Prof. Nutr., Michigan State College, E. Lansing Helen Parsons Prof. Nutr., University of Wisconsin, Madison LITERATURE CITED Jennie Rountree Prof. Nutr., University of Washington, Seattle Hazel Stiebeling U.S. Bureau of Home Economics, USDA 1. Leitch, I. (1942) The evolution of dietary standards. Nutr. Abs. Rev. 11: Grace Steininger Dept. Home Economics, Ohio University, 509–521. Athens 2. Young, E. G. (1964) Dietary standards. In: Nutrition, A Comprehensive E. Neige Todhunter Prof. Nutr., Washington State College, Pullman Treatise Vol. II (Beaton, G. H. & McHenry, E. W., eds.) pp. 299–350. Academic Jet C. Winter Prof. Nutr., University of Texas, Austin Press, New York, NY. 3. McCollum, E. V. (1957) A History of Nutrition. pp. 92–99. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, MA. 1 These are in addition to those women who served on the RDA 4. Guggenheim, K. Y. (1981) Nutrition and Nutritional Diseases. The Committee. Collamore Press, Lexington, MA. 3702 SYMPOSIUM

5. Harper, A. E. (1999) Defining the essentiality of nutrients. In: Modern Mineral needs of man. In: Food and Life, Yearbook of Agriculture, pp. 187–220. Nutrition in Health and Disease, 9th Ed. (Shils, M. E., Olson, J. A., Shike, M. & Washington, D.C. Ross, A. C., eds.) pp. 3–10 Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, MD. 13. Harper, A. E. (1987) Evolution of recommended dietary allowances— 6. Bing, F. C. (1967) Lydia Jane Roberts—A biographical sketch. J. Nutr. new directions. Annu. Rev. Nutr. 7: 509–537. 93: 3–13. 14. Canadian Council on Nutrition (1940) The Canadian dietary standards. 7. Dupont, J. & Harper, A. E. (2002) Hazel Katherine Stiebeling (1896– Natl. Health. Rev. 8: 1–9. 1989)—Reflections. Nutr. Rev. 60: 342–348. 15. Miller, D. F. & Voris, L. (1968) Chronologic changes in the Recom- 8. Sherman, H. C. (1911) The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition. The mended Dietary Allowances. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 54: 109–117. 16. Maynard, L. A. (1965) In: Food and Nutrition Board 1940–1965. Macmillan Company, New York, NY. Twenty-five Years in Retrospect. p. 8, NAS/NRC, Washington, D.C. 9. Stiebeling, H. K. (1933) Food budgets for nutrition and production 17. Roberts, L. J. (1944) Scientific basis for the Recommended Dietary programs. U.S. Dept. of Agr. Misc. Pub. 183. Washington, D.C. Allowances. N.Y. J. Med. 44: 59–66. 10. Stiebeling, H. K. & Phipard, E. F. (1939) Diets of families of employed 18. Roberts, L. J. (1958) Beginnings of the Recommended Dietary Allow- wage earners and clerical workers in cities. U.S. Dept. of Agr. Cir. 507. Washing- ances. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 34: 903–908. ton, D.C. 19. American Dietetic Association (1941) Recommended allowances for 11. Dupont. J. (1999) The third century of nutrition research policy— the various dietary essentials. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 17: 565–7. shared responsibility. Nutr. Today 34: 234–241. 20. Committee on Food and Nutrition (1941) Recommended Dietary Al- 12. Sherman, H. C., Dickson, M. A., Smith, M. C. & Daniel, E. P. (1939) lowances. Nutrition Division, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D.C. Downloaded from jn.nutrition.org by guest on June 5, 2011