Report of the American Diabetes Association's Task Force on Nutrition: Introduction

Writing in the sixteenth century B.C., the Egyptians described diabetes as the dissolving of flesh in urine and promoted its treatment with diets high in carbohydrate as a means of combating the loss of fuels. Early in the first century, Aretaeus of Cappadocca endorsed these suggestions, recommending a diet of milk, cereals, and starch. By the early twentieth century, the whimsical rice, potato, and oatmeal diets had evolved from these beginnings and reached the apex of their popularity. The noted physician Willis—possibly more famous for the description of a circle of blood vessels at the base of the brain—endorsed such diets on the basis of the appearance of sweetness of the urine. Thus, many a medical student was obliged to taste urine before the advent of more advanced technology. Now a more sophisticated method is employed in which a treated strip of paper inserted in the urine is transposed, to a degree proportional to the quantity of glucose present, into one of the colors of the rainbow—a facility not generally endowed to the human taste bud.