Effect of response to a low-fat diet among adolescent males on their adult blood cholesterol levels.

Background: While primary prevention of adult cardiovascular diseases should begin early, there are problems in identifying children at increased risk of future disease.

Methods: We did a follow-up study in 1991-1992 of 100 male former students at a boarding high school who had blood cholesterol measured in 1970-1971 both prior to and following a school-wide, reduced-fat dietary intervention. We compared adult cholesterol levels of the 50 subjects whose cholesterol decreased > or = 16.

National Dairy Council Award for Excellence in Medical/Dental Nutrition Education Lecture, 1993: some early beginnings and what now?

In 1942 the Department of Nutrition was established at Harvard University jointly in the schools of public health and medicine. It continues to stimulate and expand the teaching of nutrition in these schools, as well as in the school of dental medicine and similar schools in other universities. Nutrition is so broadly involved in health and disease that it should be woven, in an organized fashion, into many of the standard courses in these and other health professional schools.

Unproven diet therapies in the treatment of the chronic fatigue syndrome.

This report is a review of the unproven diet therapies recommended for individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Diet therapies promoted for the relief of CFS symptoms by the authors of five CSF self-help books were evaluated on the basis of nutritional adequacy and scientific rationale. Unproven diet therapies for patients with CFS include megavitamin/mineral supplements; royal jelly and other dietary supplements; and elimination, avoidance, and rotation diets.

Use of fat-modified food products to change dietary fat intake of young people.

Food purchasing and preparation practices were modified in two boarding high schools to increase the polyunsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio (P/S) of the diet of students by changing food products rather than attempting to change eating behaviors. During years when fat-modified products were served, the P/S of males increased by 75 percent, versus a decrease of 6 percent during control years. For females, P/S increased by 53 percent during intervention years, versus an increase of 6 percent during control years.

The environmental component: changing school food service to promote cardiovascular health.

An environmental program directed at the food service departments of two boarding high schools has been tested in a concurrently controlled longitudinal investigation in which the intervention was applied to each school in alternate years. It has been demonstrated that changes in food purchasing and preparation practices can markedly decrease sodium and modify the fat composition of foods, and that such practices result in significant changes in the nutrient intake of students. Even without an educational component for students, who maintained their usual dietary practices, the changes by food service workers led to 15-20% less sodium intake, 20% less saturated fat intake, and an increase in the P/S ratio from 0.

Effects on blood pressure of a decrease in sodium use in institutional food preparation: the Exeter-Andover Project.

To judge the effect on blood pressure, sodium intake of students at two boarding high schools was reduced by 15-20% through changes in food purchasing and in preparation practices in the schools' kitchens. Students were not asked to change their usual eating habits. Each school served alternately as the control or intervention school for one school year.

Dietary sodium reduction among students: feasibility and acceptance.

Modifications in the preparation of food served in a boarding high school during a 5-week period were successful in decreasing the sodium content of a variety of food products by an average of 51%. Such food was, in general, well accepted. The ratings of specific reduced-sodium food products equaled those of similar products containing "usual" amounts of sodium.

Diet and 20-year mortality from coronary heart disease. The Ireland-Boston Diet-Heart Study.

In a prospective epidemiologic study of 1001 middle-aged men, we examined the relation between dietary information collected approximately 20 years ago and subsequent mortality from coronary heart disease. The men were initially enrolled in three cohorts: one of men born and living in Ireland, another of those born in Ireland who had emigrated to Boston, and the third of those born in the Boston area of Irish immigrants. There were no differences in mortality from coronary heart disease among the three cohorts.