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From chemical analysis of the body...to metabolic insights provided by the new methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2018

Susan A. Jebb
Susan A. Jebb*
Affiliation:
MRC Dunn Clinical Nutrition Centre, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2DH
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It is by no means an exaggeration to say that Dr Widdowson is one of the pioneers of body composition research and her studies in the 1940s and 1950s have laid the foundations of body composition science today. These have included both animal and human studies, although this paper will focus only on the latter. Together with Professor McCance and Christine Spray she was responsible for the analysis of three entire adult human cadavers and that of a 4-year-old child (Widdowson et al. 1951). Further work with Dr Dickerson explored the composition of specific tissues and organs of the body (Widdowson & Dickerson, 1964). These studies provide some of the best direct data on human body composition. Moreover the findings from this work form the basis of the indirect techniques which are used so widely today.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Nutrition , Volume 78 , Supplement s2: A New Millenium of Nutrition Research: A Celebration of the Ninetieth Birthday of Dr Elsie Widdowson CH CBE FRS DSc, 21 October 1996 , November 1997 , pp. S101 - S112
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1997

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