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446 BIOCHEMICAL SOCIETY TRANSACTIONS Food and Nutrition Research (Report of the ARC/M[RC Committee) H.M.S.O., London, 1974, pp. 211, f3.80 If you want to know what view the conventional biochemist takes of nutrition research, this Report will enlighten you better than anything else that has been written recently. It gives you a great deal of information, though not always complete or unchallengeable, on such matters as the metabolic role of the vitamins and mineral elements, the complexities of energy production and energy homoeostasis, and especially-and at length-the biochemistry and metabolism of protein and amino acids. The biochemist will feel entirely at home when coming across cystathioninase, squalene oxidocyclase and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, and pancreozymin, enteroglucagon and aldosterone. The Report deals with other matters, too; there are brief sections, for example, on food additives, microbial and chemical contaminants, and new protein foods, and also on nutritional aspects of vascular disease, diabetes mellitus and cancer. Those of us, however, who believe that nutrition is concerned with man and his food will be disappointed that the social aspects of nutrition are touched on only casually. Just one page isdevoted to‘Ways of influencingfood consumption patterns’; undoubtedly this is a subject that has not been adequately studied, but there is nevertheless a considerable literature that seems to have been overlooked by the Committee. The only suggestion for further research into this question, recognized by F A 0 as of the greatest importance in dealing with problems of malnutrition in the Third World, is to study the effects of advertising campaigns on the nutritional value of the diet of different sections of the public. And, in the Western World, the major problem in ensuring good nutrition is also one of ‘influencingfood consumption patterns’, for large numbers of people choose to eat the wrong foods when they can-most of them-afford to eat the right foods. Malnutrition is not a matter only of dietary inadequacy, although this is the only usage of the word that the Report recognizes; malnutrition means wrong nutrition, and it refers equally to dietary excess, both general and specific: too much food or too much of the wrong food. It is incongruous for the Report to speak of ‘the general good state of nutrition in the UK’ and then-quite correctly-to discuss the increasing prevalence of diabetes, the increasing and considerable prevalence of ischaemic heart disease, and the even greater prevalence of obesity; it mentions the ubiquitous disease of malnutrition, dental caries, but it does so only indirectly in relation to fluoride. This Report will help to entrench the belief-the increasingly erroneous belief-that Nutrition is for the most part a subspeciality of biochemistry, and that consequently nutrition research should chiefly be directed to unravelling the biochemistry of the nutrients, the way they perform in the body, and the biochemical transformations in which they are involved. This is an excellent way of ensuring that human nutrition continues to be the neglected science that the Report deplores, and of continuing the ‘failure to indicate to the younger generation of scientists that nutrition deals with problems which are intellectually challenging and that the solution of these is likely to benefit the community directly’. The Report suggests that the part-the biochemical part-is virtually equal to the whole-the nutritional whole. Such an approach may appeal to the young scientist seeking only a narrow intellectual stimulation in his chosen career. But many young people who look for a career that has social relevance will not see how they will be able ‘to benefit the community directly’ by devoting their working lives to a subject that is described, in the opening sentence of the Report, in this way: ‘The science of human nutrition is mainly concerned with defining the optimum amounts of the constituents of food necessary to achieve or maintain health’. J. YUDKlN 1975