Iron deficiency (ID) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) remain prevalent nutritional problems in many parts of the world. Among infants and young children, IDA has adverse effects on growth and development. Mental deficits exhibited in infancy can be long lasting. Efforts are being made to combat these problems. However, in the past decade little success was made. Currently there is interest in developing home fortificants that are versatile, inexpensive, efficacious and effective. One of these is the Sprinkles, which contain iron fumarate coated with a soy lipid and other micronutrients. The Sprinkles is packaged in small sachets and intended to be added to ready-to-eat home-prepared complementary foods once a day. An acceptance test was conducted in 5 cities in China. The Sprinkles was provided for the acceptance by infants aged 6-24 months and children of 2-5 years in 4 successive weeks. Their mothers were interviewed 4 times during the period of the study. The results showed that both the mothers, the infants and young children accepted the foods with added Sprinkles well.

Huang Ti's "Nei Ching Su Wen" is the earliest classical work on medical science in ancient China. It summed up the results of observations made in long years through practice by the ancient Chinese labouring people, accumulating thereby lots of valuable knowledge and experience in different lines of medicine.Some two thousand years ago, Chinese medical scientists in the Chou and the Chin Dynasties already conceived the advanced idea of laying special emphasis on prophylactic measures, and began to adopt diet therapy as a means of medical treatment. Principles of preparing complete diet were worked out by them. And in this connection, it is mentioned in the book "Nei Ching Su Wen" that "five kinds of cereals are the means of subsistence, five kinds of cattle provide beneficial food in the form of meat, five kinds of vegetables can be used for food enrichment, and five kinds of fruits may serve as supplement." These principles point out the necessary sorts of food to constitute a complete diet and their respective positions in it. That is to say, cereals including beans and peas are the staple food and animal meat is of secondary importance, with vegetables to enrich and fruits to supplement the first two. A diet thus prepared will not only consist of all the nutritive elements needed by the human body but also represent an appropriate arrangement of the different kinds of nutrients. Such a diet is, no doubt, in accord with the dietetic theory of modern science.

Using the micromethod of Farmer and Abt, plasma vitamin C content of 9S boys and girls in a middle school was determined throughout the year 1954 to 1955. A dietary survey was also carried out every month of the year, for calculating the vitamin intake. The results of the present study are as follow:1. When the diet contains ample amount of fresh leafy vegetables in season, a satisfactory plasma vitamin C level can be maintained. When the diet is limited in fresh vegetables, plasma vitamin C readily decreases in those seasons.2. There is a significant seasonal variation of plasma vitamin C content Highest values are obtained in winter, the maximal content occurring in December. The minimal value is observed in June. This corresponds to the variation in the. level of vitamin C intake in different seasons. There is no significant difference between Autumn and Winter.3. No definite correlation between plasma vitamin C content and the condition of the gums was observed in the present study.4. The plasma vitamin C content of Chinese and English school children observed by some other authors was lower than that obtained in the present investigation. It is believed that the increase plasma vitamin C of the subjects in this study is mainly due to improvement of the living condition of the population and widespread education of the people in the fundamentals of nutritional science in recent years.

Determinations of the reduced aseorbic acid content of fifty different kinds of vegetables and fruits obtained in Lahsa, Tibet were carried out from May 17 to June 80 arid Oct. 22 to Nov. 7, 1952 with the indophenol titration method. Analyses were also made on the cooked vegetables prepared by quick frying for 3 minutes, quick frying and stewing for 13 minutes and boiling for 10 minutes in aluminum, iron and brass utensils.Most of the results obtained agree with those from 7 other places, namely: Chungking, Chengtu, Kweiyang, Gantze, Peking, Shanghai and Nanking. However, a considerable variation was noted among the same varieties of vegetables in the 8 different localities.Among 15 kinds of edible herbs analysed, 12 gave a considerable high value of ascorbic acid. The laminae leaf contained more ascorbic acid than the tuber. Therefore, such edible herbs and the leaves of tubers should be made use of as a source of vitamin C for the inhabitants in high altitudes.The loss of ascorbic acid content of vegetables varied with the method of cooking and the type of cooking utensils. During quick frying and quick frying and stewing, there was a loss of 5.0—41.3％ and 4.4—28.6％ respectively. When vegetables were boiled in brass pan, the destruction was several times higher than when boiled in iron and aluminum pan. It is suggested that the brass pan customarily used by the Tibetans be replaced by iron and aluminum one.

When albino rats were fed with high cholesterol diet or injected With a large dose of carbon tetrachloride or chloroform, severe fatty liver developed but without any morphological changes in the pancreas. However, when fatty liver was produced with a protein free diet, the atrophic change in the acinar cells was observed prior to fatty infiltration in the liver. No change was found in the islets of Langerhans.The presence of lipocaic factor as an internal secretion of the pancreas cannot be verified by these studies or by our previous works.

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The carotene content of 63 kinds of plant materials including vegetables, grasses, wild plants and tree leaves were determined by the column chromatography method. Alfalfa, shepherd purse and carrot had the highest carotene content among the tested plants.Four methods were tried for the preparation of carotene concentrates. It was found that percolation with ethyl ether after grinding in ethanol showed the highest yield at low cost.The carotene content of the above mentioned concentrates was almost completely destroyed after 4 months when stored at room temperature and exposed to light. There was appreciable loss of the vitamin after 5 months' storage in the dark at low temperature (below 6℃), however, the loss was much smaller than that stored at room temperature. The loss of carotene was greatly reduced when the carotene concentrates were stored under nitrogen either at low temperature or at room temperature compared with those stored in the air. The addition of heated soy-bean meal to the carotene concentrate also considerably reduced the carotene loss during storage at room temperature.

0.05) The above amount was enough to maintain the subjects two weeks in good vitamin C nutrition as judged by steady plasma ascorbic acid content of about 1 mg%. At the end of maintenance period, 400mg of ascorbic acid was administered. The urinary excretion of ascorbic acid in 24 hours was about 30% of the test dose.This method is reliable but not suitable for large scale analysis as it involves daily urine collection and analysis.The urinary excretion of ascorbic acid decreased during menstrual period in women subjects.

Sixty-seven students suffering from nightblindness in a middle school in Peking were examined with a new apparatus designed by us for the dark adaptation test before and after the treatment of the disease during April, 1955. This apparatus was equipped with a series of holes with different luminosity. The time needed to see all the holes before and after the treatment with vitamin A, was 118 and 62 seconds respectively. In the following spring, a year after diet improvement program was started, there were no complaint of nightblindness among the students. In May, 1956, 49 students who had sufferred from nightblindness in the previous year, were reexamined with the same apparatus, and the time needed was 45 seconds When this result was compared with that of a vitamin A supplemented group (31 seconds), there was no significant difference.From the above findings, it has been shown that nightblindness can be prevented by improvement of the diet alone, and the above apparatus is suitable for the diagnosis of nightblindness for mass nutritional survey. The description of the apparatus is presented in the text.