In 1914, Joseph Goldberger identified pellagra as a nutritional deficiency disease. Goldberger designed and implemented two experiments to assess whether improving the diet of institutionalized children and adults would prevent pellagra. It was determined that their diet was poor in lean meat or other animal protein food.

Goldberger’s team observed no recurrences among the 67 children who had reached or passed the anniversary of their previous attack, nor did they observe any new cases of pellagra among the 99 non-pellagrins who had been observed for one year.