Artificial vitamin C has become a bulk product. To explain how ascorbic acid could enter everyday life, one less has to look at medical necessities than at the dynamic interplay of production, promotion, and health care policy. Hence, this contribution focuses on the complex interactions of health concepts, diagnostic instruments and the physician's gaze necessary to endow ascorbic acid with a medical indication. On the one hand, this reveals the differences between a "purely scientific" and a "medical-biological" point of view. On the other hand, as man last but not least is what he eats, this points to the fact that nutrition and parts of it always are soaked with health policy and moral.