Ancel Keys, 100; Diet
Researcher Developed K-Rations for Troops
By Myrna Oliver, Times
Staff Writer
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
![K-ration meal](../images/la-keys2_i7os7tkf.jpg)
Ancel
Keys, best known for putting the K in K-rations by assembling meals that
could be carried into combat during World War II, and dubbed "Mr.
Cholesterol" for demonstrating the relationship between a fatty diet and
heart disease, has died. He was 100.
Keys died Saturday in Minneapolis of natural causes.
Decades ahead of diet gurus, the University of Minnesota physiologist
determined through his meticulous studies of what people should do to
"Eat Well and Stay Well," the title of the 1959 book he wrote with his
chemist wife, Margaret.
"There is no single person whose contribution to understanding the
causation and potential for prevention of heart disease has matched
Ancel's," said Dr. Darwin Labarthe, a cardiovascular epidemiologist with
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the celebration of
Keys' centenary in January.
Keys' simple K-ration meal was perhaps his best-known and his most
quickly completed accomplishment. But it signaled his lifelong effort to
determine what people should eat to function and survive in the
stressful modern world.
Educated at UC Berkeley and Cambridge, Keys had developed considerable
respect among physiologists when, in 1941, he was tapped by the War
Department to assemble a nonperishable, ready-to-eat meal that would fit
in a paratrooper's pocket.
With very little research, Keys, who had founded the University of
Minnesota Lab of Physiological Hygiene two years earlier, went to a
Minneapolis grocery store and began rummaging through the shelves. He
selected compact packets of hard biscuits, dry sausage, chocolate bars
and hard candy.
He tested the 28-ounce, 3,200-calorie meal on six soldiers training
nearby at Ft. Snelling, and determined that the rations provided
necessary energy and relieved hunger. "The meals were palatable," one
solder said, according to a 1941 Times story, "better than nothing."
The Army — later adding chewing gum, toilet paper and four cigarettes to
each packet — began mass-producing the meals and, to Keys' surprise,
dubbed them K-rations, presumably in his honor.
Keys served as a special assistant to the secretary of War and later an
executive in the Office of Lend-Lease Administration. Privy to
information coming out of Europe, he became concerned about the effects
on nutrition deprivation on the war-torn population.
With the War Department's permission, in 1944, he conducted the
six-month Minnesota Starvation Experiment with 36 volunteers who were
conscientious objectors. Through scientifically administered
semi-starvation diets, the men lost 25% of their body weight. Keys
determined that the starvation shrank their hearts, reduced their
endurance and to a lesser extent their strength, and even changed their
personalities.
His study, later published under the title "Biology of Human
Starvation," helped guide the rehabilitation of undernourished Europe
after the war.
"Starved people cannot be taught democracy," the blunt-spoken Keys
warned. "To talk about the will of the people when you aren't feeding
them is perfect hogwash."
As statistics from war zones emerged, Keys observed that the death rate
from coronary heart disease dropped as food supplies dwindled. At the
same time, he was noticing in local obituary columns the large number of
men's deaths caused by heart attacks.
The inquiry that would define his career landed him on the cover of Time
magazine in 1961 and earned him the nickname "Mr. Cholesterol."
In 1947, Keys tracked 286 Minneapolis-St. Paul businessmen between 45
and 54 and determined that those who suffered heart attacks had high
serum cholesterol levels. Never one to mince words, he explained:
"The cholesterol gets deposited in the arteries until it looks as if
someone has dumped Cream of Wheat in them. A heart attack occurs when
the blood clots or a blockage forms in the congested arteries."
The rise in heart attacks in the U.S., he found, closely paralleled the
increase in fat the American diet.
"Americans have Sunday dinner every day," he said, and make the stomach
"the garbage-disposal unit for a long list of harmful foods."
Expanding his research, Keys launched the Seven Countries Study,
surveying 12,763 men 40 to 59 in the U.S., Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia,
Italy, Netherlands and Japan. Heart attack rates, he found, correlated
with diet and exercise.
With the two studies, Keys showed not only that bloodstream cholesterol
was the major factor in heart disease, but also that saturated fats,
including butter, red meat and fried food, were the major causes of
bloodstream cholesterol.
Finns, who spread butter on their cheese, he observed, had the highest
heart-attack rate, while rates were much lower in the Mediterranean
nations of Greece and Italy, with a diet of fruits and vegetables,
bread, pasta, chicken and fish, olive oil and a little wine.
Keys began to advocate and popularize the Mediterranean diet.
Experimenting in their own kitchen, he and his wife devised recipes and
menus, writing the best-selling cookbook and guide "Eat Well and Stay
Well." They followed that with "The Benevolent Bean" in 1967 and "How to
Eat Well and Stay Well the Mediterranean Way" in 1975.
The couple used their royalties to buy a home on the coast of southern
Italy, where they could easily maintain their recommended diet.
Keys, 5 feet 7 and 155 pounds, practiced what he preached. Nevertheless,
given his lack of confidence in anecdotal evidence, he was reluctant to
attribute his own longevity to his diet.
"Very likely," he told the news media at his 100th birthday last Jan.
26. "But no proof."
Born in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the nephew of actor Lon Chaney,
Keys grew up in Berkeley and demonstrated a proclivity for science early
in life. He was given a chemistry set on his 8th birthday, which led to
an uncharacteristic experimental failure: Trying to chloroform a fly, he
keeled over.
At Berkeley, Keys earned a bachelor's degree in economics and political
science, a master's in zoology and a doctorate in oceanography and
biology.
He earned another doctorate, this time in physiology, at King's College,
Cambridge University in England, and did postdoctoral work in Copenhagen
under Nobel-winning physiologist August Krogh.
In 1935, while teaching at Harvard, Keys organized and directed the
International High Altitude Expedition in the Andes to study the effects
of altitude on people living and working at 20,000 feet.
Keys joined the University of Minnesota in 1936 as a biochemist at its
Mayo Foundation in Rochester, and a year later moved to the Minneapolis
campus to teach physiology. He retired in 1972.
He is survived by his wife; a daughter, Carrie D'Andrea of Bloomington,
Minn.; and a son, Dr. Henry Keys of Albany, N.Y. Another daughter,
Martha McLain, was shot to death by robbers in Jamaica in 1991.
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times Links of Possible Further Interest:
http://www.marauder.org/krations.htm
http://www.qmfound.com/history_of_rations.htm
http://www.usarmymodels.com/ARTICLES/Rations/rationsintro.htm
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