Nutritional Science research at Berkeley began long before the establishment of the Department of Nutritional Sciences in 1960. Myer Jaffa was the first in the U.S.A. to receive the title of "Professor of Nutrition" in the 1890's: he studied the diets of Chinese immigrants and also of a vegetarian community in the Bay Area. In the 1920's Herbert Evans, in the Department of Anatomy, discovered vitamin E. In the 1930's a group in the Poultry Husbandry laboratory that included Herman Almquist, Samuel Lepkovsky, Robert Stokstad, and Thomas Jukes were leaders in the identification of members of the "vitamin B complex" and of vitamin K.

From 1915 to 1954 the teaching of human nutrition was led and organized by Agnes Fay Morgan who had come from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in chemistry. She became Chair of a Department of Home Economics, but put her energy into developing Nutrition Science. By her retirement, 31 people had earned Ph.D.'s in Nutrition in her group. Much of the work had been on vitamin deficiencies and cholesterol metabolism, and the changes undergone by proteins during food processing. For her research Morgan received the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society and the Osborne and Mendel Award of the American Institute of Nutrition. In 1954 the Department's present building was completed and named Morgan Hall in her honor in 1964.

After Morgan's retirement in 1954, Home Economics was moved to Davis and Morgan Hall was now solely committed to the nutritional sciences. George Briggs was brought in to organize it and he, in turn, recruited Doris Calloway, Sheldon Margen and Robert Stokstad. A human metabolic unit where live-in nutritional studies with up to 12 volunteers could be run was established in the building's "penthouse" and the faculty increased to 16 FTE. For the next decade much effort was focused on human protein requirements and on the metabolic roles of folic acid, some of it related to the use of anti-folates in cancer treatments. Further human balance studies were carried out with zinc intake as the variable.

The possible carcinogenic effects of burnt and smoked foods, and the opposing beneficial effects of cruciferous foods have also been studied over the years, and we are now "The Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology".

The reputation of the Department is reflected in five of its members having been asked to serve as President of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences (formerly American Institute of Nutrition): Agnes Morgan, George Briggs, Robert Stokstad, Doris Calloway and Janet King.