Functions: Thiamine is essential for the breakdown of foods, especially
carbohydrates, to release energy and for healthy nerve and muscle function.
Functions: Deficiency causes reduction of growth and disorders of the
nervous and cardiac systems (well-known under the name "beri-beri").
Historically, it occurred in people living on diets of mainly white rice
(where the thiamin in the whole grain has been removed or destroyed). In
animals, progressive paralysis and neck retraction has been observed.
Production: The history of thiamine is both fascinating and important,
for it was through the discovery and naming of thiamine that the word
'vitamin' was coined (from the Latin vita = life and amine =
nitrogen-containing compound).
Moreover, the notion that the absence
of a substance in food could cause a disease was a revolutionary one in the
early 1900s. Early thiamine research, therefore, laid a foundation for all the
nutrition research to come. Fortification of white flour, cereals, pasta and
rice began in the United States during the Second World War and other
countries quickly followed suit. Fortification of staple foods has virtually
eradicated the B-vitamin-deficiency diseases in developed nations.
Chemical synthesis of thiamine is a complicated process, involving some 15-17
different steps. Although commercial production of thiamine was first
accomplished in 1937, the production did not develop on a broad scale until
the 1950s, when demand rose sharply because of food fortification.
Product forms: Vitamin B1 is available from DSM Nutritional Products
as pure crystalline powder forms of thiamine hydrochloride and thiamine
mononitrate.
