Take Your Cue From CSU The Need for Ascorbic Acid and How to Get It in Your Diet. I When Magellan sailed around the world about 1520, almost all of his crew were stricken with scurvy. This is a disease characterized char-acterized by tissue changes which lead to soft, swollen gums, defective bones and teeth, and degeneration of muscle fibers. We know today that scurvy comes from a lack of sufficient ascorbic acid in the diet over a long period of time. It was one of the first diseases to be recognized as dietary in origin. Magellan's sailors ate limes to control the disease though they didn't know why such citrus food was effective. Today, severe scurvy is practically unknown in this country. There's more tied to ascorbic acid or vitamin C than the prevention of scurvy. This vitamin vit-amin also seems to act as a body safeguard in times of physical stress. Low blood levels of ascorbic ascor-bic acid often appear in cases of infectious disease and in the healing of wounds. Increasing the amounts of ascobrlc acid in the diet at these times helps. Nutritional studies of high school and college students in the state show that the dietary and blood plasma values for ascorbic acid do not meet recommended rec-ommended standards. The National Na-tional Research Council recommends recom-mends a daily intake of 70-75 milligarms for adults and 80-100 milligrams for adolescents. Smaller Smal-ler amounts are not considered safe for all individuals over a long period of time, even though they may protect against scurvy. Growing youth and aged people need more ascorbic acid than others. Research showed that 50 percent per-cent of the high school and college col-lege girls rated poor to fair on blood levels of ascorbic acid. Diet studies showed that one-fourth one-fourth of the hoys and one-fifth of the girls were receiving less than one-half the amount of ascorbic as-corbic acid recommended by the NRC. These values are average figures, fig-ures, which do not show the en tire picture. Individuals may have much higher or much lower low-er values than the average. Generally, Gen-erally, the blood levels were lower low-er in spring than in the fall, and usually lower in the boys than in the girls. Research showed that many adult women are not receiving enouh vitamin C in their diets. The ascorbic acid content of the blood of 98 women attending a school lunch conference was determined. de-termined. Twenty-tight per cent in these rated in the poor and fair groups. Manv factors account for the low levels. One thing, of course, is that enough ascorbic acid-rich food Just isn't consumed. Another An-other is that the lack of stability stab-ility of the vitamin makes it probable that people get less in their systems from the foods they cat then we might expect. The food is often shipped from a distance, exposed to a warm, dry atmosphere in a market, subjected sub-jected to poor storage conditions in a home, or cooked carelessly. Any of these will tend to decrease de-crease the amount of ascorbic acid in the food.