American Nutrition Association Announces Nutrition Hall of Fame® 2021 Inductees

Chicago, IL, September 21, 2021 – The American Nutrition Association (ANA) will induct George Brewer, MD, MACN and Ananda Prasad, MD, PhD, MACN into the Nutrition Hall of Fame® at the 62nd Annual Personalized Nutrition 2021: Mapping the Future on September 28, 2021, in the company of their peers, colleagues and nutrition professionals around the world.

“Dr. Brewer is a giant in the field of nutrition, having done groundbreaking research and applied science in the understanding of the vital role of copper levels in human health. Dr. Prasad has helped saved the lives of millions of children around the world through his seminal work on the role of zinc in pediatric diarrhea” said Michael Stroka, JD, MS, CNS, LDN, CEO of the ANA. “We owe much of our understanding of zinc’s crucial role in health to Dr. Prasad and those who have followed him. It is a deep honor to induct Dr. Prasad and Dr. Brewer into the highest honor in nutrition: the Nutrition Hall of Fame.”

Inductees to the American Nutrition Association’s Nutrition Hall of Fame are selected based on their monumental achievements in the field of nutrition.

Dr. Brewer served as President of the ANA (then known as American College of Nutrition) from 1996-97. He received the ACN Award for Distinction for Outstanding Research in Nutrition in 1989, and the ACN Mastership Award in 1999. Other awards throughout his career include: a USPHS Career Development Award, 1965-70, Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Chicago in 1976, a Certificate of Appreciation from the Wilson’s Disease Association in 1983, a Raulin Award from the International Society for Trace Element Research in Humans in 1998, a Sellner Professorship of Human Genetics from the University of Michigan in 2000, and a Honorary Degree, Doctor of Science, Purdue University, 2004. He is a fellow of the Morris Animal Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Brewer received his medical degree from the University of Chicago and is the Sellner Emeritus professor of human genetics and Emeritus professor of internal medicine of the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also currently co-director of Vetgen Laboratories and co-director of Cypris LLC.

Dr. Prasad’s pioneering studies from the Middle East in the early sixties established for the first time the essentiality of zinc for human nutrition and showed that its deficiency occurred in humans. The impacts of this discovery include establishment of RDA for zinc in 1974, mandatory inclusion of zinc in TPN fluids in 1978 resulting in saving of many lives, its use in children with acute diarrhea decreasing the mortality and its use in the elderly with age related macular degeneration for prevention of blindness.

Dr. Prasad is author of twelve books and over three hundred scientific articles. Several of his papers have been cited as citation classics. One paper was republished as nutrition classic and another as landmark article. In 2011, he received a prestigious Mahidol Award from Thailand for his contributions in the field of zinc metabolism and an award from ACP for outstanding research in Medicine in 2007.

Dr. Prasad, a past President of the ANA (then known as American College of Nutrition) has been at Wayne State University since 1963 when he took a position as director of the division of Hematology, a post he held until 1984, when he became the director of the division of research. Dr. Prasad has also been a professor of medicine at Wayne from 1968 until the present. He was appointed as distinguished professor of medicine, Division of Hematology– Oncology in 2000.