254 TH E CH I NA STU DYAs a prerequisite to representing my nutrition society on this pub-
lic affairs committee, I first had to decide, for myself, how nutrition is
best defined. It's a far more difficult question than you may think. We
had scientists who were interested in applied nutrition, which involves
people and communities. We had medical doctors interested in isolated
food compounds as pharmacological drugs and research scientists who
only worked with isolated cells and well-identified chemicals in the
laboratory. We even had people who thought nutrition studies should
focus on livestock as well as people. The concept of nutrition was far
from clear; clarification was critical. The average American's view of nu-
trition was even more varied and confused. Consumers were constantly
being duped by fads, yet remained intensely interested in nutrient
supplements and dietary advice coming from any source, whether that
source was a diet book or a government official.
One day in late spring of 1979, while doing my more routine work, I
got a call from the director of the public affairs office at the FASEB who
coordinated the work of our congressional "liaison" committee.
Ellis informed me that there was yet another new committee being
formed within one of the FASEB Societies, the American Institute of
Nutrition, that might interest me.
"It's being called the Public Nutrition Information Committee," he
told me, "and one of its responsibilities will be to decide what is sound
nutritional advice to give to the public.
"Obviously," he said, "there's a big overlap between what this new
committee wants to do and what we do on the public affairs commit-
tee."
I agreed.
"If you're interested, I would like to have you join this new commit-
tee as a representative of the public affairs office," he said.
The proposal sounded good to me because it was early in my career
and it meant getting a chance to hear the scholarly views of some of
the "big name" nutrition researchers. It also was a committee, accord-
ing to its organizers, that could evolve into a "supreme court" of public
nutrition information. It might serve, for example, to identify nutrition
quackery.