Day 266 - 20 Jun 96 - Page 31
1 lifestyle you would need to look at all the things; you
2 need to look at exercise, alcohol, pollution, smoking.
3 Diet would be a very important part of that and also if you
4 had a poor diet then it would make a considerable
5 difference to your health.
6
7 Q. I think we agree, do we not, you and I, Miss Brophy, when
8 you are looking at the etiology, the causes of degenerative
9 disease in the western society, we have to have regard to a
10 wide range of possible causative factors, including things
11 which have nothing to do with diet at all?
12 A. Yes, that is true, but it is also true, if you take an
13 example which might help to take a look at the way the
14 factors interact. For example, if you take people
15 smoking. Smoking is known to be a strong cause of certain
16 cancers. Smokers who have a poor diet have an even greater
17 chance of, significantly greater chance of, suffering those
18 cancers like lung cancer, cancer of the oesophagus etc. A
19 poor diet can make their risk factors even higher. There
20 is evidence that if you smoke and have a healthy diet that
21 has plenty of the antioxidant nutrients, the protective
22 nutrients, it is high in fibre, etc. that you have a lower
23 risk of suffering from lung cancer from the effects of
24 smoking than if you had a poor diet and also smoked. So,
25 yes, they do interact, and the diet is an important factor
26 whether you have other factors or not. It is still is a
27 considerable cause of disease.
28
29 Q. Good. Well, that means I can pass on. I have only got two
30 more things I want to deal with, Miss Brophy. The first
31 thing I want to deal with is salt, and only in a very
32 limited way. The conclusions of the intersalt report is
33 essentially, as far as your role in educating society about
34 health is concerned, or your particular community about
35 health, the conclusion is, is it not, that a reduction of a
36 hundred minimols of sodium a day would have a beneficial
37 effect in reducing hypotension?
38 A. You are referring to the--
39
40 Q. To the BMJ?
41 A. To the British Medical Association.
42
43 Q. Yes?
44 A. Whilst I am familiar with the overall results of that,
45 I am not familiar with the exact figures because my role is
46 to have an overview of the research and put that in terms
47 that people understand, but if you are asking me to sort of
48 compare this blood pressure and that amount of minimols, it
49 is--
50
51 Q. All right. I am not going do the blood pressure stage. I
52 can leave that until later. Am I right that 100 minimols
53 of sodium translate into 5.8 grammes of salt? That is to
54 say, in chloride, per day or per any occasion.
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: 5.5?
57
58 MR. RAMPTON: 5.8, my Lord. There are, I think, 23 milligrammes
59 of sodium in one minimol. Is that true?
60 A. Where are you looking?
