Day 252 - 20 May 96 - Page 15
1 a prediction about atherosclerosis or cardiovascular
2 disease?
3 A. Well, apoprotein B is the one that carries most of the
4 cholesterol, so you would expect it to be elevated if low
5 density, like proteins are elevated, and the total
6 cholesterol is elevated, but the point about this table is
7 there are no significant differences between either of the
8 dietary treatments which indicates that by modifying one's
9 diet not a great deal happens as a result of it.
10 Certainly, within the period of the study of one month.
11
12 Now, having prepared the subjects in this way they were
13 given a meal of fat, and it is stated in the document here
14 that this was 730 grammes of fat per square metre. Now, I
15 must say I found that the terminology that was used in this
16 paper was pretty archaic. I mean, one does not really talk
17 now about hydroglycerides and one certainly does not talk
18 about doses of anything in relation to square metre body
19 surface area. I had to go back to my students' physiology
20 text book to find out what this meant in relation to body
21 weight.
22
23 Q. What does it mean?
24 A. I discovered that 730 grammes of body fat per metre
25 amounted to an average 75 kilogramme person, because I
26 calculated from data in the paper itself by the index.
27 This amounted to something like 125 grammes of fat that was
28 given in a slug. You know, it was given what is referred
29 to as a milkshake, a very strange milkshake, 120 grammes of
30 fat. Now, that is actually more than an average man would
31 consume in his diet, in his normal food, in 24 hours. So,
32 this is a huge load of fat that is put on the subjects.
33
34 Q. Can you tell me whether it tells us what kind of fat this
35 splodge or lump was that they were given?
36 A. No, all that is said, not in the paper but in the
37 accompanying letter, was that it was the milkshake. In
38 other words, it was the fat emulsion. Very obviously it
39 will not be animal fat because one could not really make an
40 emulsion of dripping or lard or mutton fat. It would have
41 to be a vegetable oil that was emulsified. That is my
42 assumption, because we are simply not told, but if you are
43 going to produce something that can be drunk it would have
44 to be liquid. So this huge load of fat was given and then
45 measurements were made thereafter, and the conclusion was
46 that if one consumed a diet high in fat this slows down,
47 virtually slows down, the clearance of triglycerides from
48 the blood. Normally, when you eat a meal the fat is
49 digested, it enters the blood circulation and is rapidly
50 cleared by the animal's tissue which has drawn from the
51 blood and this normally takes 3 hours or so, depending on
52 the size of the meal. This obviously went on a bit longer
53 here, but what they are suggesting is that if one is
54 accustomed to eating a high fat diet the ability, the rate
55 of clearance of the fat in the blood is slowed down whereas
56 on the lower fat diet it is cleared more rapidly.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can I just take you back to absolute
59 basics? In the process of digestion, various qualities
60 -- call them what you will -- in what has gone into the
