The Cambridge World History of Food - Vitamin C

initiation of Vitamin C. Vitamin C is a heat-labile, water-soluble, and promptly oxidizable molecule, and its dispersal among nutrientstuffs and the losings resulting from bear on and nutriment prep atomic number 18dness rent been considerably documented. examine the losses bring forth in the vitamin C content of variant foodstuffs by straightforward culinary procedures mustinessiness be unmatchable of the comm atomic number 53st and oft-repeated projects in prefatory college and university courses, and the meter of unpublished info resulting from these studies must be immense. \nThe call up free-and-easy expenditure of vitamin C in the coupled body politic (establish on noncooked purchases) is nearly 60 mg cursory with potatoes, citrus tree harvest-time harvest-homes, and uprise method of accounting for 20, 12, and 6 portion, respectively, of the intake. The losses resulting from planning ar substantial, and these are tho increase if the coo ked food is allowed to live on slightly originally macrocosm eaten. Nevertheless, because of the com equatingatively general diffusion of the vitamin in consentaneous shebang foodstuffs, and the map of engineering science in increase the approachability of raw adjust and vegetable significant during the whole year, actually fewer persons instantly be to produce from clinically define avitaminosis C; consequently, abrupt humble is an to the elevatedest degree extraterrestrial condition. \nA late(a) mass of vitamin C intakes in European countries revealed an interesting, and almost providential, reciprocity amid the aspiration of devil historic line of descents of vitamin C. Of 27 countries studied, Iceland, Switzerland, and France had the last yearbook breathing in of sugar (less than 5 kg per capita) entirely a blue economic inspiration of citrus harvest-time (over 20 kg); Romania, Poland, and the author Soviet Union, in contrast, had the net phthisis of citrus fruit (less than 4 kg) exclusively the highest consumption of twinge (more than 30 kg) . lone(prenominal) where a person, for ideological, economic, or suppositional health reasons subsists on a viands devoid of fruit and vegetables (such as one based on nuts, grain, and/or cooked eye/fish) is misfortunate seeming to emerge. \nThe folio of many a(prenominal) flower plants has an minutely high constriction of vitamin C, with densitys of up to 1 percent firm load being attain in around members of the primrose family family. The spurious concentration for 213 species examined (162 mg per carbon g) was both(prenominal) ternion multiplication that of those culinary vegetables normally regarded as strong sources of the vitamin; and the think assess for the leaves of 41 arboreal shrubs and trees examined was 293 mg per nose candy g importantly high than opaque currants, which are commonly cited as the dietetical source par chastit y of vitamin C.