Elsie Widdowson

Elsie Widdowson (21 October 1906 – 14 June 2000), was a British dietitian and nutritionist.

She and Dr Robert McCance, a pediatrician, physiologist, biochemist, and nutritionist, were responsible for overseeing the government-mandated addition of vitamins to food and wartime rationing in Britain during World War II.

Widdowson was born in Wallington, Surrey on 21 October 1906 to Rose Elphick and Harry Widdowson.

Her father, Thomas Henry (known as Harry), was from Grantham in Lincolnshire and moved to Battersea as a grocer's assistant and eventually owned a stationery business, whilst her mother Rose, originally from Dorking, worked as a dressmaker.

Her younger sister Eva Crane trained as a nuclear physicist but became a world-renowned authority on bees.

The family were Plymouth Brethren.

Elsie lived in Dulwich as a child and attended Sydenham County Grammar School for Girls where both she and her sister won prizes.

During the 1920s and 1930s, professional opportunities for women, apart from nursing or teaching, were limited.

Educated women such as Widdowson had to develop skills that offered employment potential; therefore, Widdowson trained as a chemist.

She studied chemistry at Imperial College, London and although she completed her degree in two year, she had to wait until 1928 to be awarded her BSc, when she became one of the first women graduates of Imperial College.

She did postgraduate work at the Department of Plant Physiology at Imperial College, developing methods for separating and measuring the fructose, glucose, sucrose, and hemicellulose of fruit.

She would measure individual changes in the carbohydrates in fruit from the time it appeared on the tree to when it ripened.

Once a fortnight, she took a train to Kentish apple orchard and picked apples, measuring their carbohydrate levels.

In 1931, she received her PhD in chemistry from the Imperial College for her thesis on the carbohydrate content of apples.

This work would go on to have international impact.

She started work in the university’s department of plant physiology.

While her early studies are primarily plant-based, Widdowson was much more interested in the biochemistry of animals and humans.

She did further research with Professor Charles Dodds at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital, on the metabolism of the kidneys, and also received a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute.

Although Widdowson had attained a doctoral degree from a prestigious institution, she was still struggling to find a long-term position.

Dr. Dodds suggested that Widdowson consider specializing in dietetics, so she started a postgraduate diploma at King's College, London.

She learned about the compositions of meat and fish and how cooking affected them.

Widdowson met Robert McCance in the kitchens at King's College Hospital in 1933, when she was studying industrial cooking techniques as part of her diploma on dietetics.

McCance was a junior doctor researching the chemical effects of cooking as part of his clinical research on the treatment of diabetes.

Widdowson pointed out an error in McCance's analysis of the fructose content of fruit, based on her PhD research.

Instead of being offended, McCance obtained a grant for Widdowson to analyze and correct all previous data.

McCance became a Reader in Medicine at Cambridge University in 1938, and Widdowson joined his team at the Department of Experimental Medicine in Cambridge.

They worked on the chemical composition of the human body, and on the nutritional value of different flours used to make bread.

Widdowson also studied the impact of infant diet on human growth.

They studied the differing effects from deficiencies of salt and of water, and produced the first tables to compare the different nutritional content of foods before and after cooking.

Their work became of national importance during the Second World War.

Widdowson and McCance were co-authors of The Chemical Composition of Foods, first published in 1940 by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Their book "McCance and Widdowson" became known as the dietician's bible and formed the basis for modern nutritional thinking.

As WWII progressed, the blockade on most food tightened.

Essential foods such as butter, meat, cheese, fish, and eggs became very limited.

Widdowson and McCance became concerned for the health effects such an extreme rationing system would cause.

Widdowson and McCance and their colleagues became their own experimental subjects.

The two would put themselves on a starvation diet, coupled with rigorous exercise such as climbing mountains and burning almost 5,000 calories (the healthy amount of calories to burn per day for a woman is about 2,500).

Then, they would put themselves on their developed diet of bread, cabbage and potatoes for several months to find out if wartime rationing—with little meat, dairy or calcium intake—would affect their health.

From there on they became scientific partners and worked together for the next 60 years, until McCance died in 1993.

A few years after the first grant, McCance obtained a second grant for Widdowson to continue working on the food composition of fruits, vegetables, and nuts.