GLEANINGS IX BEE C IT L T U R E 



Reptkmber, 1920 



T 



C 



VITAMINES 



Stancy 



HERE, if 



that title 



does 11 o 1 

 cause every up 

 to-date beekee})- 

 er to sit up and 

 take notice, then 

 I do not know 

 b 6 e k e 6 pers. A 

 year and a half 

 ago, in Our Food Page, I made the state- 

 ment that there are vitamines in honey and 

 thereby started something. Among the 

 many letters it called forth was a particu- 

 larly nice one from England, and there were 

 some doubting articles in other magazines. 

 One scientific beekeeper cautioned the edi- 

 tor of Gleanings not to let Stancy Puerden 

 say too much about vitamines in honey lest 

 she should have to ' ' back water ' ' in the 

 future, which would be embarrassing. 



While I was just as sure as I am now that 

 honey contained vitamines of some sort I 

 did not, at that time, have proof sufiBcient to 

 convince those doubters "who are from 

 ]\tissouri." I had just reasoned it out that 

 as vitamines seem to be in practically all 

 natural foods they must be in honey. Na- 

 ture does not make blunders of that sort, 

 and I had asked several eminent chemists 

 and dietitians, and they assured me there 

 could be no doubt of the fact. ^Further evi- 

 dence was the large amount of unsolicited 

 testimony as to the value of honey as a 

 food, particularly as a sweet beneficial to 

 invalids and children. 



AT last we have proof that there is a 

 moderate amount of the fat-soluble 

 vitamine, called Fat-soluble A in comb 

 honey, and it is probable that there are small 

 amounts of the vitamine. Water-soluble B 

 in all honeys, but no anti-scorbutie vita- 

 mine. 



The Fat-soluble vitamine, you will recall, 

 is the one which is often alluded to as "the 

 growth principle," and which is contained 

 in abundance in the fat of milk, the yolk of 

 eggs, and in green, leafy vegetables. Inci- 

 dentally, McCollum, of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, who has conducted so much research 

 along this line, considers Fat-soluble A of 

 the utmost importance in the diet. Being 

 much less widely distributed in foods than 

 Water-soluble B there is much more danger 

 of a deficiency of it in the diet. 



Many of you may not know that the pres- 

 ence of these tiny dietary essentials, gener- 

 ally termed vitamines, is not determined by 

 chemical analysis. For that reason they are 

 frequently alluded to as unidentified dietary 

 essentials, and their presence or absence in 

 foods is determined by a long and expensive 

 series of feeding experiments upon animals, 

 the animals often being white rats or guinea 

 pigs. The diet of these little animals is 

 somewhat similar to that of human beings, 

 and their natural span of life is short enough 

 to permit of conclusive experiments being 

 conducted in a comparatively short time. 



IN HONEY 



Puerden 



3 



The man who 

 conducted the 

 feeding experi- 

 ments to deter- 

 mine the pres- 

 e n c e of vita- 

 mines in honey 

 this past year is 

 Philip B. Hawk, 

 Ph. D. of Jeffer- 

 son Medical College, Philadelphia. For years 

 he has been experimenting upon the digesti- 

 bility of various foods by a new process of 

 watching the digestion at different stages in 

 human beings, and he has also been doing 

 research work on vitamines. He is a con- 

 tributor to scientific journals and is very 

 well known to the general public for his con- 

 tributions to the "Ladies' Home Journal." 

 Even if you do not happen to remember his 

 name you will doubtless recall the series of 

 articles he wrote several years ago on the 

 digestibility of certain foods, and more re- 

 cently for his article on vitamines. The re- 

 sults of his experiments with honey will be 

 published in some scientific journal, a notice 

 of which will appear in Gleanings at a later 

 date. 



WHITE rats were the animals chosen 

 for the experiments to determine 

 whether there were present in honey 

 the vitamines Water-soluble B and Fat-sol- 

 uble A. The first work was done in testing 

 honey for the former. Rats were selected 

 and divided into three groups, the rats from 

 each litter being distributed to make the 

 groups as uniform as possible. These were 

 kept in sanitary cages with an abundance 

 of water. One group was fed a diet known 

 from previous experience to contain all the 

 essential nutrients except the Water-solu- 

 ble B vitamine, in which it was deficient. 

 Another group was fed the same diet except 

 that a blended, extracted honey was added 

 to it. Still another group was fed the same 

 diet with the exception of extracted clover 

 lioney added. 



These two latter diets were known to con- 

 tain no water-soluble vitamines except such 

 as might be contained in the honey. The 

 individual rats in these groups were care- 

 fully weighed each week and records kept of 

 their weights. 



At the end of four weeks the diets were 

 changed so that the rats of group 1, which 

 had received no honey, were subdivided into 

 two groups, half of which received blended 

 honey and the other half white-clover hon- 

 ey. The rats of the other two groups, wliich 

 had been receiving honey, now had this re- 

 placed by a starch. 



After another two weeks another change 

 in diet was made, which consisted in re- 

 placing all these previous food mixtures by 

 milk, which was known to be adequate for 

 growth and to contain Water-soluble B. This 

 was to show that failure to grow had been 

 due to a dietary deficiency and not to dis- 

 ease or other accidental causes. 



