Not even a lime in his beer - goodnews - college student develops scurvy - Brief Article

A junk food diet of sodas, cookies, sweets and chocolate--with no fruits and vegetables--has caused a college student to develop scurvy.

Although he was eating a sufficient number of calories per day, researchers estimated that his vitamin C intake was about 0.1 milligram per day--virtually none compared to the 90 milligrams of recommended daily allowance (RDA) for non-smoking men.

And the RDA figure is generally considered extremely low by many nutritionists, who routinely recommend 10 times this amount for optimum health.

After four days of taking a prescribed multivitamin and vitamin C supplement, the student's symptoms greatly improved. The condition improved further after an additional two weeks of extra vitamin C. The story shows that people really do need to get vitamin C every day because it isn't stored by the body.

The case was described at the January 22, 2003 annual meeting of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

COPYRIGHT 2003 PRIMEDIA Intertec, a PRIMEDIA Company. All Rights Reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group