The Academy of Nutrition Sciences (ANS), in its latest blog, reflects on the role of vitamin D in health, which was recognised for the first time more than a century ago by Dame Harriette Chick and has, over the course of the last 100 years, developed extensively.
Vitamin D remains at the forefront of research and a specially curated Virtual Issue of Nutrition Bulletin, available free-to-access online at Vitamin D: 100 years of research - 1922-2022: Nutrition Bulletin (wiley.com) has drawn together 14 papers published in the journal over the past 10 years on the topic. Included among these is an editorial (Buttriss & Lanham-New 2022) which summarises the history of vitamin D over the last century.
Professor Judy Buttriss, Academy of Nutrition Sciences:
The year 2022 will feature in history books for a number of reasons; but in the world of nutrition, it marks the Centenary of the landmark investigation by Dame Harriette Chick and her co-workers. Exactly 100 years ago, working with malnourished children in a clinic in Vienna (Austria) shortly after the First World War, they showed that rickets in children could be prevented or cured by cod-liver oil supplementation. Cod liver oil was subsequently recognized as a particularly rich source of vitamin D (Chick et al. 1922).