The essential nature and organisation of food energy ... the second principle of thermo-dynamics ... and its active force (Bircher-Benner, 1939)
book · 1939
LINK
SUMMARY
Late statement of Bircher-Benner's energetic theory of nutrition, in which he applies the second principle (second law) of thermodynamics to food and posits an 'active force' carried by food. The title itself records the surrogate-mechanism move the archive documents: food value is recast as an energetic and thermodynamic quantity. Bibliographic metadata (title, translators D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer, publisher John Bale, Sons & Curnow, 1939) was copied from the Wellcome Collection work record (work her9rppr) and the Internet Archive scan (b29807232, which records the publisher and 1939 date and a Public Domain Mark), both fetched 2026-06-05. Used to ground the claim that Bircher-Benner framed the nutritive value of food as an energetic 'active force' governed by thermodynamics, with raw plant food as the highest-order food.
NOTES
A primary source for Bircher-Benner’s mechanism, cited for what he claimed rather than for its validity. The work is the mature form of his “order-energy” nutrition theory, in which the worth of a food is its energetic “active force” and is discussed in the language of thermodynamics. The Wellcome Collection catalogue record and the Wellcome Library scan held at the Internet Archive supply the bibliographic detail. The thermodynamic framing of food value is the surrogate mechanism the archive records; it was not adopted by nutritional science.