The first volume of the Annual Review of Nutrition was published in 1981 on the 75th anniversary of the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug law and the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first Annual Review (Biochemistry). Dr. William Darby of Vanderbilt University was editor of the Annual Review of Nutrition for its first five years, and I have been editor for the past ten years.

The mission of the Annual Review of Nutrition, in harmony with the general mission of Annual Reviews, Inc., is to provide a systematic, periodic examination of scholarly advances in our field through critical authoritative reviews. The purpose of a critical review is not only to summarize a topic, but also to root out errors of fact or concept and to provoke discussion that will lead to new research activity. The critical review is as essential a part of the overall scientific method as the original experiments and is part of a continuing peer-review process. It is important to point out to new investigators areas of research that give promise for the future. It is equally important to attack questionable hypotheses not supported by successive reports in order to guide research away from these less promising directions. The originality of researchers obviously must take precedence over any peer-review but the results of periodic review of a field should be helpful in the selection of new areas of research and the design of new experiments. It is my hope that during the 15 years of my association with the Annual Review of Nutrition, first as an associate editor and then as editor, our journal has fulfilled this mission in a satisfactory way.

Glen King, the co-discoverer of vitamin C, the first director of the Nutrition Foundation of New York City, and the founder of Nutrition Reviews, defined nutrition as "the science of food and its relationship to health." I find this definition accurate and sufficient. It implies that nutrition is a broad science that embraces both ecologic and physiologic sciences. Nutrition scientists include such diverse investigators as the molecular biologists who study nutrient-related gene expression and the epidemiologists who track the movement of nutrient-related diseases in populations. The thread that unites them is the relationship of their studies to various aspects of the production and utilization of food. In fact, the nutritional sciences include all of the physical and biological sciences that can be applied to the study of nutritional problems.

During my tenure as editor of the Annual Review of Nutrition we have had contributors working in essentially all of the life sciences, including chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, cell biology, experimental nutrition, animal science, anatomy, pathology, physiology, psychology, microbiology, pharmacology, and many branches of medicine, including pediatrics, general medicine, surgery, psychiatry, dermatology, neurology, and epidemiology. Of the reviews published during the last decade, 37% have come from basic life science departments, 32% from clinical departments, 25% from departments of nutrition, and 6% from research institutes and government agencies. On average, 19% of all reviews originated in foreign laboratories.

Of the topics reviewed, 55% were devoted to basic scientific aspects of nutrition, 37% to clinical nutrition, and 8% to epidemiology and public health nutrition. Although these fractions varied somewhat from volume to volume, the patterns were similar in most of them. In the current Annual Review of Nutrition (Volume 14) the distribution is almost identical to the average for the decade. Of the 13 basic science reviews, four deal with the regulation of gene expression (by trace metals and polyunsaturated fatty acids or by genetic defects in mitochondrial respiration and fructose metabolism), two deal with lipid metabolism (adipocyte development and peroxisomes), and one discusses the properties of NO-synthetase from arginine. Additional papers discuss the properties of resistant starch, the mechanisms of action of nonglucose insulin secretagogues, the artificial rearing of preweaning rats, and the role of iron-binding proteins in the survival of pathogenic bacteria. Finally, two reviews, one on the horse and the other on migratory birds, treat comparative nutrition.

The eight clinical reviews describe progress in human nutrition. The areas covered include amino acid requirements, growth factors in milk, the significance of dietary peptides, the role of choline, the pharmacology of vitamin C, the effect of solutions used for oral rehydration of humans with severe diarrhea, the role of transthyretin (prealbumin) in health and disease, and nutritional factors in the osteopenia of infancy.

Two reviews are devoted to epidmiology and public health. The first is the prefactory chapter by Dr. Waterlow on childhood malnutrition in developing nations. He has written a masterful review of protein-energy malnutrition as a medical disease, a public health problem, and a research problem in pathophysiology to which his group has contributed many important concepts. The second review on a public health topic is an epidemiologic study of diet, bodybuild, and breast cancer by Drs. Hunter and Willett. As we look ahead, what are the challenges for nutritional science? The future seems bright because we have so much more to learn about the relationship of food to health. Of particular importance in the future will be studies of the relationship between genetics and nutrition, not only in the determination of nutritional requirements but also in the pathophysiology of the major chronic diseases. The incisive application of the techniques of molecular biology to unmask the role of nutrients in gene expression, already the subject of two reviews in Volume 14, will be another important related area for study.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences recently published a report entitled "Opportunities in the Nutrition and Food Sciences"¹ which concludes with the following statement:

"These are among the best of times for the nutrition and food sciences, yet their future is far from certain. Few investments promise comparable returns in terms of improved quality of life for individuals and productivity of society as do those in the nutrition and food sciences. For those disciplines to take advantage of the many opportunities identified in this report (including the role of nutrients in cell differentiation and growth, in gene expression and in the control of food intake), more financial support is needed for the research and the training of students, and greater efforts must be made to attract a new generation of high-quality, achievement-oriented, career-seeking scientists to this field."

I hope that the Annual Review of Nutrition will continue to chronicle the exciting work of the future in the nutrition and food sciences and aid in the attainment of the objectives of the IOM report.

I am very pleased to have had the privilege of serving as editor of the Annual Review of Nutrition for the past 10 years. I am also happy to announce that the new editor, effective July 1, 1994, is Donald B. McCormick of Emory University, and the associate editors are Dennis Bier of the University of Texas in Houston and Alan Goodridge of the University of Iowa. All three have been my colleagues during the past decade, and I want to thank them for the assistance they and a series of hard-working members of our Editorial Committees have given me over this period. Thanks are also due to a number of gifted production editors in Palo Alto, most recently Ann Dahlquist, for their diligence in producing each volume.

Robert E. Olson, Editor

1-Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine. 1994. Opportunities in the Nutrition and Food Sciences: Research challenges and the next generation of investigators. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.