Vernon Young, 66; Showed How Much Protein Humans Need
Vernon R. Young, 66, a nutritional biochemist whose work showed how much protein people need, died March 30 in Cambridge, Mass., of complications of renal cancer.
A native of Rhyl, Wales, Young earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in agriculture at the universities of Reading and Cambridge in England and a doctorate in nutrition at UC Davis. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965. A full professor at the time of his death, he also lectured at Harvard Medical School and directed research at Shriners Burns Hospital in Boston.
Young focused his research on how the body metabolizes amino acids obtained from eating protein, developing quantitative rather than qualitative methods to determine how much protein the body needs for growth and maintenance.
He not only influenced nutritional labels on packaged foods, but also increased standards for dietary needs practiced by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
