Sidney Valentine Haas, M.D. (1870–1964) was a U.S.
pediatrician
Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...
whose research determined a dietary means of combating
celiac disease
Coeliac disease ( British English) or celiac disease (American English) is a long-term autoimmune disorder, primarily affecting the small intestine, where individuals develop intolerance to gluten, present in foods such as wheat, rye and ba ...
.
Haas was born in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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and moved to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
when he was six years old. He attended
New York University Medical School
NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...
and
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...
's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In 1924, Haas achieved notice when he published a medical paper detailing his use of a
banana
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry (botany), berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, Cooking banana, bananas used for ...
diet for the treatment of the eight children diagnosed with celiac disease. Haas incorrectly concluded that bananas enabled the breaking up of starches and the conversion of cane sugar into fruit sugar, which prevented the debilitating diarrhea of celiac disease. Haas’ research led to the development of the
Specific Carbohydrate Diet
The specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) is a restrictive diet originally created to manage celiac disease; it limits the use of complex carbohydrates ( disaccharides and polysaccharides). Monosaccharides are allowed, and various foods including fish ...
, a nutritional regimen that restricted the use of complex carbohydrates (
disaccharides
A disaccharide (also called a double sugar or ''biose'') is the sugar formed when two monosaccharides are joined by glycosidic linkage. Like monosaccharides, disaccharides are simple sugars soluble in water. Three common examples are sucrose, la ...
and
polysaccharides
Polysaccharides (), or polycarbohydrates, are the most abundant carbohydrates found in food. They are long chain polymeric carbohydrates composed of monosaccharide units bound together by glycosidic linkages. This carbohydrate can react with w ...
) and eliminated refined
sugar,
gluten
Gluten is a structural protein naturally found in certain cereal grains. Although "gluten" often only refers to wheat proteins, in medical literature it refers to the combination of prolamin and glutelin proteins naturally occurring in all gra ...
and
starch
Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diets ...
from the diet. Haas never accepted the finding that gluten was the damaging part of wheat; he insisted it was starch and called the discovery about a gluten a "disservice".
During his career, Haas treated over 600 cases of celiac disease. In 1951, he joined his son, Dr. Merrill P. Haas, in publishing the medical textbook ''The Management of Celiac Disease''.
References
1870 births
1964 deaths
American pediatricians
New York University Grossman School of Medicine alumni
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