History of Nutrition: History and Current Status of Research in Human Energy Metabolism

Abstract

Research on carbon metabolism began in France with the work of Antoine Lavoisier whose discovery that carbon was oxidized in the body as it is in a burning flame led to quantitative studies that com pared CO2 production with heat production. Since that time the physics and chemistry of carbon metab olism have been a major focus in the field of nutri tion. Lavoisier penetrated the curtain of dephlogisticated air and began the era of quantitative chemistry. He coined the word oxygen (1).