David Kritchevsky

Roslyn B. Alfin-Slater

The science of nutrition has advanced beyond expectation since Antoine La voisier as early as the 18th century showed that oxygen was necessary to change nutrients in foods to compounds which would become a part of the human body. He was also the first to measure metabolism and to show that oxidation within the body produces heat and energy. In the two hundred years that have elapsed, the essentiality of nitrogen-containing nutrients and of proteins for growth and maintenance of tissue has been established; the ne cessity for carbohydrates and certain types of fat for health has been docu mented; vitamins necessary to prevent deficiency diseases have been identified and isolated; and the requirement of many mineral elements for health has been demonstrated. Further investigations have defined the role of these nutrients in metabolic processes and quantitated their requirements at various stages of development. Additional studies have involved their use in the possible prevention of, and therapy for, disease conditions.

Micronutrients Volume 3B

Nutrition and the Adult

Macronutrients Volume 3A

Rodolfo Paoletti

Advances in Lipid Research, Volume 15 is a four-chapter text that covers important aspects of lipid chemistry, including biomembranes and fungal lipids. The first chapter is devoted to the long-range order in biomembranes. This chapter presents evidence that the proteins and lipids of biological membranes are partitioned into functional and structural aggregates in the plane of the membrane. The second chapter surveys the pharmacology and toxicology of steroids and related compounds. This chapter also provides the methodology, physiologic and transport mechanisms, and effects on the central nervous system. The third chapter explores all aspects of lipid composition of all classes of fungi. This chapter also discusses the intracellular distribution and biosynthesis of the lipid components of fungi. The fourth chapter considers the biochemistry of plant sterols, including structure, stereochemistry, biosynthesis, metabolism, and function. This book will be of value to lipid chemists, biochemists, and researchers.

Advances in Lipid Research

Advances in Lipid Research, Volume 4 provides information pertinent to the actions of catecholamines to lipid metabolism. This book discusses lipid metabolism in microorganisms wherein one relates specifically to the fatty acids of microorganisms and the other to general aspects of lipid metabolism in microorganisms. Organized into seven chapters, this volume begins with an overview of some of the contributions of lipid research to the understanding of the clotting mechanism. This text then examines the extent to which dietary carbohydrate interferes in lipid metabolism. Other chapters consider the lipid-mobilizing effects of adrenomimetic agents, which are highly specific for the depot type of adipose tissue. This book discusses as well a number of areas of bacterial lipid biochemistry that are under investigation. The final chapter deals with the procedures for assessing the purity of labeled lipids by organic synthesis, biosynthesis, and isotope exchange techniques. This book is a valuable resource for biochemists, scientists, and research workers.

James W. Anderson

Charles T. Bonfield

Twenty years ago the very idea of an international conference on the fiber contained in plant food would have been totally inconceivable. At that time fiber was generally viewed as an inert component of food of no nutritional value and consequently consid ered as a contaminant, the removal of which would enhance the purity of a product. It was measured by a now obsolete and almost worthless test introduced in the last century for veterinary rather than human nutrition, and what was measured was referred to as "crude fiber," containing part of the cellulose and lignin but none of the numerous components of fiber now known to play important roles in the maintenance of health. There were a few lone voices prior to the last two decades who had extolled the laxative properties of the undigested portion of food, assuming that these were related to its irritant action on the bowel mucosa. In retrospect this was a total misconception, and "softage" would have been a more appropriate term than "roughage," since its presence insured soft, not irritating, colon content.

Chemistry, Physiology, and Health Effects

Dietary Fiber

Advances in Lipid Research, Volume 10 is a six-chapter text that is devoted to several special areas of lipid research, including significant progress in established areas of interest in the field. The introductory chapter surveys the application of electron microscopic techniques to the analysis of plasma lipoproteins. The subsequent chapter deals with the possible modification of reticuloendothelial functions by lipids and the role of lipids in cellular, humoral, and immune responses. These topics are followed by discussions of the microsomal enzymes of sterol biosynthesis and the enzymatic synthesis and degradation of glycerol lipids, which contain ether bonds. The remaining chapters focus on lipid neurochemistry. These chapters specifically examine particular brain lipids, such as fatty acids, phospholipids, sphingolipids, galatosyl lipids, and sterols. A discussion of lipids of the entire nervous system and their variation with age is also included. This book will prove useful to lipids chemists, biochemists, and organic chemists.

Advances in Lipid Research reviews advances in lipid research and covers topics ranging from lipid histochemistry and control of plasma and liver triglyceride kinetics by carbohydrate metabolism and insulin. Lipid metabolism in tissue culture cells is also discussed, along with the carcinogenicity of steroids and the chemical and biological properties of heated and oxidized fats. Comprised of five chapters, this volume begins with an introduction to the histochemistry of lipids in both its qualitative and quantitative aspects, followed by an analysis of the roles of carbohydrate metabolism and insulin in relation to their control of the metabolism of plasma and liver triglycerides. Lipid metabolism in many tissue culture systems is the subject of the next chapter. The experimental and theoretical aspects of the connection between cancer and steroids are also examined. The last chapter deals with the possible harmful effects of heating dietary fats and how heating may alter the chemical and biological properties of fats. Attention is paid to auto-oxidation, carcinogenicity, and the interaction of heated fats with other dietary components. This monograph will be useful to students, practicing professionals, and research workers in biology and biochemistry.

George V. Vahouny

Dietary fiber is a topic that has burgeoned from an esoteric interest of a few research laboratories to a subject of international interest. This growth has been helped by the intense public interest in the potential benefits of adding fiber to the diet. The general popularity of fiber may have been helped by the perception that, for once, medicine was saying "do" instead of "don't. " There has been a proliferation of excellent scientific books on dietary fiber. Why another? The Spring Symposium on Dietary Fiber in Health and Disease was an outgrowth of our belief that informal discussion among peers-a discussion in which fact is freely interlaced with speculation-was the most effective way to organize our knowledge and direct our thinking. The normal growth progression of a discipline inc1udes its branching into many areas. Soon the expertise, which was once general, is broken into many specialties. Intercommunication becoIlles increasingly difficult. It was our intent to provide a forum that would expose its participants to developments in areas related to their research interest. Free exchange under these conditions could not help but broaden everyone's knowl edge and expand his horizons. We feel that this symposium was singularly successful in achieving its goals. It resulted in a free and friendly exchange of knowledge and ideas. It helped to establish seeds for future collaborations based on mutual interest and friendship. The proceedings of this conference will serve as yet another basic resource in the fiber field.

Dietary Fiber in Health and Disease

Only 15 years ago a conference on dietary fiber, let alone an international conference, would have been considered an extremely unlikely, and in fact an unthinkable, event. Yet in recent years a number of such conferences have taken place at the international level and in different parts of the world; the conference of which the present volume is an outgrowth is the second to have been held in Washington, D. C. This extraordinary development of interest in a hitherto largely neglected component of diet has been reflected by a veritable explosion of scientific literature, with published articles increasing 40-fold, from around ten to over 400 per year, within the decade 1968-1978. Not only has the growth of interest in and knowledge of fiber made it perhaps the most rapidly developing aspect of nutritional science in recent history if not in all time, but epidemiologic studies relating fiber intake to disease patterns, subsequently broadened to include other food components, have been largely responsible for the current concept of diseases characteristic of modern Western culture and lifestyle. The potential importance of this realization is forcefully underlined by the considered judgment of Thomas MacKeown, epidemiologist and medical historian of Birmingham University, England.

Basic and Clinical Aspects

Advances in Lipid Research, Volume 3 presents the analysis of human serum lipoproteins and emphasizes the possibilities inherent in the application of computer methods to such analyses. This book discusses the effects of various drugs on the other important component of the serum lipids, the phospholipids. Organized into six chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the possibility of a dehydrogenation toward the methyl group. This text then presents a detailed discussion of lipoprotein structure, metabolism, and catabolism. Other chapters consider some potentially significant revisions in lipoprotein procedure, including additions to the technology of lipoprotein analysis. This book discusses as well the chemistry and metabolism of plasma lipoprotein as related to physiological and disease states. The final chapter deals with the advances in methods of purification and studies of the properties and mode of action of lipases. This book is a valuable resource for organic chemists, neurochemists, and biochemists.

David Heber

This book was inspired by a gatheringofscientists in Los Angeles in 1994 under the auspices of the UCLA Clinical Nutrition Research Unit which is funded by the National Cancer Institute to promote new research into nutrition and cancer prevention. This unit supports research integrating basic and metabolic/clinical investigations which examine observations from epidemiologic studies and their application to the prevention ofcommon forms ofcancer through nutritional intervention. There is a great deal ofinformation from epidemiologic, experimental and metabolic studies implicating elements ofthe diet as important in the development and progression of common forms ofcancer including breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and uterine cancer. When these forms ofcancerareexaminedcarefully, it isclearthat they share anumber ofcommon etiologic factors related to dietary fat, lipids, and hormones. A human cancer is usually discovered at a point where it has formed a detectable mass. For many forms of cancer, this may require 10 to 15 years from the time when the cancer is first initiated. Nutritional efforts at prevention may delay the progression ofcancer to a detectable mass resulting in reduced incidence and may retard the clinical progression and metastatic spread ofcancer after its primary treatment.

New Horizons in Basic Research

Dietary Fats, Lipids, Hormones, and Tumorigenesis

Advances in Lipid Research, Volume 17 is a six-chapter text that covers the most prevalent problems in lipoprotein mechanism research works. The opening chapters examine the metabolic role of high-density lipoproteins (HDL), specifically the role of HDL in cholesterol transport. The next chapter discusses cholesterol metabolism in various types of clinical hyperlipidemias and describes cholesterol turnover as a function of hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, or a combination of the two. Other chapters deal with the hypocholesterolemic effect of polyunsaturated fats on man, as well as the mechanism of lipid peroxidation in mitochondrial membranes and its effects on alterations in cellular processes. The closing chapter relates to membrane phenomena, with particular emphasis to the study of membrane structure by means of membrane-cooperative enzymes. This chapter also explores the application of allosterism as a tool for membrane research. This book will prove useful to lipid and enzyme chemists, biochemists, and researchers.

David Kritchevsky

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