AbstractsChemistry

The first effective impulse to a systematic investigation of the chemistry of food was given by Liebig some fifty years ago. The earliest quantitative analyses of food materials which we have found are those of potatoes reported by George Pearson in England, 1795. In 1805, Einhoff made similar analyses of potatoes. He also determined several of the constituents of the ash. Liebig and his associates Playfair, Boeckman and others, in the latter half of the last century, made analyses of foods using methods similar to those now in use. It is interesting to observe how accurate many of their results were. These chemists were more interested, however, in the qualitative composition of foods than in quantitative analyses and made more satisfactory determinations of the ash constituents than of the organic compounds. Until the year 1880, those who wishes to know about the chemical composition of food materials, had to use analyses made in German laboratories, but since that time, interest and investigation in this subject arose in our own country, and now, since 1906, complete and exhaustive statistics compiled by Atwater and Bryant, relative to the chemical composition and nutritive value of all American food materials are available.