Serum Lipids in Different Phases of Carbohydrate Metabolism ‡

If the reader would integrate the intermediary metabolism of lipids with that of carbohydrates let him read, albeit in reverse direction, Dr. Peters' chapters on lipids and carbohydrate in Grollman's text,' the article on "The interrelations of foodstuffs in metabolism" in the 1951 Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine,' the chapter on lipids in the 1946 edition of Quantitative clinical chemistry by Peters and Van Slyke,t the 1941 Yale Journal article "A new frame for metabolism,"tm and the chapter on lipoids in the 1931 edition of Quantitative clinical chemistry.' Certain landmarks, which Dr. Peters recognized before the era of isotope experiments, stand out: that fatty acids could be synthesized from carbohydrate or protein foodstuffs except for the essential, unsaturated fatty acids, that cholesterol could be synthesized endogenously and followed different routes in intermediary metabolism than triglycerides or phospholipids, that fat in adipose tissue was an invaluable source of fuel for energy metabolism. The above source articles written throughout a span of 25 years give a forceful picture of interlocking relationships between the roles of carbohydrate and fat in the physiological balance of storage and expenditure of bodily energy. From the stimulus of the above articles stemmed investigations on lipid fractions during recovery from diabetic acidosis and measurements of alimentary lipemia after a breakfast containing carbohydrate, proteins, and fat or after the same breakfast with supplementary ingestion of carbohydrate.