ABSTRACT
Proper nutrition means that there is enough food so that the majority of people will have the possibility of choosing how to regulate their eating behaviour in the light of nutritional recommendations. Proper nutrition cannot be defined in that narrow sense to find the answer to the question of how to feed the inhabitants of a country or a city in times of scarcity. For Arthur Scheunert, a Professor in Leipzig and one of the founding fathers of vitamin research in Germany, defining proper nutrition was very simple. Without protein, some kinds of fat, vitamins, mineral nutrients, trace elements and an adequate energy supply, our body will perish. This is the 'general line' which Uwe Spiekermann criticized in an article about nutrition objectives as structural conservatism in German nutrition research. Nutrition recommendations mean both advice from professional nutritionists to a broader public as well as nutrition hints from journalists and editors based on professional nutritionists' recommendation.
