J. F. BROCK 
at least in hypotheses which should be submitted to scientific 
investigation. 
The obvious favourable effects of twentieth century techno- 
logical sophistication of food on life-expectation and stature 
have been examined already. ‘The total is impressive, and 
any adverse effects have, up to the present, been negligible by 
comparison. The favourable effects have been largely due to 
production by farmers of more and better quality foodstuffs, 
and their more efficient and universal commercial distribution. 
But it must be recognized that these benefits have been 
achieved through a technology which has inevitably involved 
sophisticated methods of production and processing. Admit- 
tedly some of these technological methods are capable of 
improvement in the direction of producing foods nearer to the 
concept of “‘primitive simplicity or naturalness” 
At the Tenth Anniversary Symposium of the Ciba Founda- 
tion I devoted most of my communication on “Research in 
Clinical Nutrition” to the great advances in our knowledge of 
protein requirements which have developed out of the public 
health and scientific study of the deficiency disease called 
kwashiorkor. At the same time I drew attention briefly to the 
rapid advances in our knowledge of the role of fats in diets with 
particular reference to ischaemic heart disease. 
Fats and Heart Disease. ‘The rising prevalence of, and the 
increased mortality from, ischaemic heart disease in privileged 
Western communities, and particularly in the privileged social 
groups, are statistically associated with changes in total 
serum cholesterol and other lipid fractions of the human blood 
including especially triglycerides and phospholipids. These 
lipid changes, in turn, are clearly related to changes in the 
quantity and quality of dietary fat resulting from technological 
food sophistication. Many factors other than diet obviously 
influence the adverse trends—suchas lack of exercise, tensionand 
strain, and cigarette smoking, but there can be no doubt about 
the significant réle played by diet in general and by dietary 
fat in particular. Mechanisms are still obscure and complex 
but this fact does not detract from the significance of the trends. 
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