Doris Howes Calloway, a pioneering nutritionist at the University of California-Berkeley for 27 years and an early advocate of eating a wide variety of foods, including lots of vegetables, fruits and whole grains, has died. She was 78.
Ms. Calloway, a woman so unusual among midcentury researchers that her first award was a “man of the year” plaque, died Aug. 31 in a Seattle nursing home of complications from Parkinson’s disease.
She called her unique laboratory the Penthouse; it became a model for studies worldwide.
Established in 1963, it was the first for studying food metabolism by healthy people in a homelike setting rather than sick patients in hospitals.
Ms. Calloway studied nutritional needs of astronauts traveling in space, soldiers in varied climates and terrains, people in developing countries, menstruating and pregnant women, the elderly, and ordinary people.
She also was the first woman to become a senior administrator at Berkeley when she served as provost for the university’s professional schools and colleges from 1981 to 1987.
Ms. Calloway’s research had much to do with reshaping national standards for recommended daily allowances from specific food groups. In 1995, she led the U.S. government committee that reviews those dietary guidelines.
Ms. Calloway, a native of Canton, Ohio, was a consultant on nutrition to the United Nations, the National Research Council and the World Health Organization; wrote more than 100 scholarly articles; and co-wrote or edited several books.
After attending the University of Chicago, she began her career doing research at the Armed Forces Food and Container Institute in Chicago.
It was there that she won her “man of the year” plaque, which she displayed prominently in her office through her career.
