Abstract
At 6 p.m. on January 30, 2015, Dr. Ricardo Bressani passed away in Guatemala City at the age of 89. Dr. Bressani was an initial Associate Editor for Food Science and Technology of the Food and Nutrition Bulletin. He was in no way a stranger to scientific journals, having served for 5 years as the Editor-in-Chief of the Archivos Latinoamericanos de Nutrición in the 1990s, and he had over 300 personal publications in a wide range of scholarly international journals.
He was born Cesar Ricardo Bressani Castignoli, a son of Italian immigrants to Guatemala, on September 28, 1926. After university studies in Guatemala, he obtained his master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Iowa in 1951. After a year at the fledgling Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) as head of the food analysis laboratory, he was back to graduate studies. This time the training was in food sciences at Purdue University in Indiana, where he would receive his doctoral degree in 1956. He returned to Guatemala and to INCAP in that year and would begin his odyssey through applied investigation of the highest order and relevance. His signature and revered achievement is the food science and food technology research that went into the formulation of an all-vegetal protein supplement, Incaparina. This was the first practical example of complementarity for amino acid quality of vegetable mixtures, in which the lysine deficiency of cereal grains and the methionine deficiency of legumes are mutually compensated by one another. As Professor Nevin Scrimshaw, a coinvestigator in the process, characterized the product on the pages of this journal: “a mixture of predominantly vegetable protein origin having a nutritional value similar to that of milk and suitable for the mixed feeding of infants and young children.” The original formulation for human use consisted of 9% maize flour, 29% sorghum flour, and 38% cottonseed flour; for micronutrients, it had 3% torula yeast as well as 1% calcium carbonate and preformed vitamin A.
Dr. Bressani would dedicate much of his research career to improving the quality of the staple foods of people of Mayan heritage. On one side, for the cereal grain, his unit explored the utility and limits of a protein-enriched variety of corn, Opaque II. They also verified the high nutritional bioavailability of the calcium derived from soaking the maize in lime during preparation. On the other side, for legume seeds, they improved the cooking characteristics of black beans by hybridizing beans to reduce the phenolic components and soften the husk. This would reduce cooking time and conserve fuel. In terms of public service, Ricardo Bressani was the creator of the formulas for the fortified school cookie, which served as a nutritional snack food in the 1980s, and of Vitacereal, a fortified infant and toddler cereal designed at the behest of the World Food Programme in Guatemala.
Ricardo brought leadership to a neglected issue of accurate and continuously updated food composition information for elements of the diet in the In-Foods connection of the Food and Agriculture Organization. His domain was that of “Latin Foods” for the region of the Americas. Ricardo was granted an exemption to the mandatory retirement age of 62 years for employees of the Pan American Health Organization and remained until he was 65 years old, leaving service at INCAP in 1991. This would be only an incentive to a new career. In 1992 he moved over to the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, and in 1998 he founded the Center for the Studies of Food Science and Technology (CECTA), where he remained until retiring as Director Emeritus in 2012. During this time, his research focused on foods and agroindustrial by-products that could contribute to food security in Guatemala.
He received innumerable honors in the United States and around the world, beginning with his corresponding membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He was also the winner of the Babcock Hart Award of the U.S. Institute of Food Technologists and the McCollum International Award of the American Society of Clinical Nutrition. He received an honorary doctoral degree (Honoris Causa) from his alma mater, Purdue University. On the international front, he won the Abraham Horwitz Prize for service to the Pan American Health Organization and the Mexican National Science and Technology Prize. He was the third winner of the Danone International Nutrition Prize in 2003.
In his own country of Guatemala, he was the inaugural awardee of the Congressional Medal in Science and Technology in 1997, as well as receiving the highest award conferred on a civilian citizen of the Republic of Guatemala, the Orden del Quetzal en el Grado de Gran Cruz. He held yet another honorary doctorate from the Universidad del Valle of Guatemala.
Finally, in a very personal manner, the authors of this memorial text first combined with each other in the context of Dr. Bressani on his major projects in capacity-building in food science and technology. The junior author (M.N.O.F.) wrote her master’s thesis at the Universidad del Valle entitled “Formula evaluation of tomato sauces prepared with red palm oil,” a theme that emanated in part from Dr. Scrimshaw’s involvement with this edible oil. The senior author (N.W.S.) was the project research advisor, and Ricardo Bressani headed the thesis committee. In a similar manner, Ricardo advised dozens of young students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Guatemala and abroad. His contributions and support to the local food industry and government have been fundamental to Guatemala’s efforts to eradicate malnutrition in the country. His office doors were always open to anyone looking for a piece of his immense experience and knowledge.
Ricardo Bressani’s service as an Associate Editor of this journal is sincerely acknowledged. He was truly a world-class academic and technological giant who contributed to the mission of disseminating the relevant findings of food research across these pages.