“改良膳食乃复兴民族之一策”——近代中国生物化学家吴宪的营养科学救国论

Dietary Improvement is One of the Strategies of National Revival——The Theory of National Revival Through Nutrition by Wu Hsien,a Pioneer Biochemist of Modern China

吴宪是近代中国生物化学的开拓者和奠基人。他在20世纪二三十年代针对中国人膳食进行了一系列营养学研究,随着民族危机的迫近,进而提出了以膳食改良国民体格实现民族复兴的想法。吴宪认为中国人的饮食营养不良,导致国民体弱多病,这是国家积弱落后的重要原因之一,因此复兴民族首先要从改良中国人的膳食入手。这一复兴道路的提出及其实践过程中遇到的困境,背后是吴宪那一代科学家的科学理想在中国社会现实中的失落。

Wu Hsien,the pioneer and founder of modern Chinese Biochemistry,had done a series of nutrition research on Chinese food in the 1920s and 1930s.Among the trends of national rejuvenation,Wu Hsien from the nutritional point of view put forward to improve the national diet to further physical realization of national revival.He believed that Chinese people＇s diet lead to national frail, which was one of the reasons of modern China＇s weakness and backwardness.Therefore,to realize national rejuvenation should start from people＇s diet.However,this theory turned out to encounter millions of difficulties in practice,which meant that those modern Chinese scientists like Wu Hsien＇s scientific ideals got loss in modern China＇s social reality.