The essential nature and organisation of food energy and the application of the second principle of thermo-dynamics to food value and its active force / by M. Bircher-Benner ; translated by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer.

  • Bircher-Benner, Max Oskar, 1867-1939.
Date:
1939
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The essential nature and organisation of food energy and the application of the second principle of thermo-dynamics to food value and its active force / by M. Bircher-Benner ; translated by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    animals and man the demands of this harmony in the region of forms extend to the structure of the organs of consumption and digestion. Food should supply everything needed by the organism’s energic activities:— (1) The various energic frameworks storing light quants which appear as stages of reduction and possess definite potentials are called redox-potentials because they are raised by reduction and are consumed by oxidation. Among these are all proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, in “ stimulated state ” and in the correlative quantitative condition existing in them as constituents of the total nutriment. In his exegesis Crile points out that all proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, being relatively stable com- binations, their energy could not be made use of in the life of the cell without “ ignition.” Proteins act as kindling matter, their molecules containing carbohydrates and nitrogenous compounds. Through introduction of nitrogen the molecule changes into an explosive substance. Metaphorically speaking, proteins and carbo- hydrates in energic consumption may be compared to priming matter and powder in a cartridge. Whence results one of the correlations of the quantitative propor- tions between proteins and carbohydrates and fats respectively, at which the organisation of food energy must aim because it is of importance for the cell’s energic activity. (2) The regulators of energy consumption which either inhibit or sustain acceleration such as catalyzators, vita- mins, etc. Amongst them are some which facilitate so-called “ coupled reactions,” that is when new redox- potentials are introduced into an oxidised system which