The subjects of this study consisted of forty-two females of 25-60 years old living in a farm village whose hemoglobin content was less than 11g/dl at the previous survey in July 1973.
The mean value of their hemoglobin content, showing 9.1g/dl at that time, rised to 12.0g/dl in November, 1973, but it refalled into significant lower level in July, 1974.
Serum constituents which lowered in July as compared with those in November were serum protein and serum albumin, particularly the decrease of serum albumin were remarkable in the 40 years old group. On the other hand, increasing serum β-globulin was markedly found in a group engaging in farming usually than the other group.
The level of nutritional intakes of the subjects coincided approximately with the information obtained from other investigators except that somewhat lower intakes of calorie and carbohydrate were seen.
Significant positive correlations were observed between hemoglobin and intakes of calories, calcium and vitamin A which were considered to be poor in diets of the farm village.
From these findings, it is pointed out that an inadequacy of nutritional intakes may cause prevalent anemia among female inhabitants of the farm villages.

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The effects of several plant pigments or its derivatives on cholesterol metabolism in rats were studied.
1. Serum and liver cholesterol depressing activity of Cu-Na-chlorophyllin, a water soluble derivative of chlorophyll, was markedly confirmed in the hypercholesterolemic rats placed on the diet containing 1% cholesterol and 0.25% bile salts.
2. However, no significant alterations in the level of serum cholesterol were shown in rats fed a cholesterol free, Cu-Na-chlorophyllin diet as compared with the control group. In such condition, a slight decrease in the liver cholesterol level was observed by Cu-Na-chlorophyllin supplement.
3. The hypocholesterolemic activities of β-carotene, rutin, quercetin and xanthophyll were not recognized.

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The Wister strain male rats 3 weeks of age were fed the folic acid deficient diet containing sulfanilamide for 2 months. Then, the effect of folic acid deficiency on their avoidance learning behavior was studied. In order to obtain some evidence about the cause of their behavioral change, brain and adrenals were analyzed for tyrosine hydroxylase, tryptophan-5-hydroxylase and catecholamine content.
Although, the leucocytes counts, granulocytes counts and hemoglobin concentration of the folic acid deficient animals were less than those of the control group, their erythrocytes counts showed only a slight decrease. These findings suggested that they were suffered from rather moderate folic acid deficiency. The avoidance learning behavior of the deficient group showed the poor ability to avoid electric shock even after 90 trials and there was a significant difference in the rate of learning between this group and the control group. However, the brain norepinephrin content and the activities of tyrosine hydroxylase and tryptophan-5-hydroxylase of the deficient group were not different from those of the control group. These results suggested that the change in learning behavior due to folic acid deficiency would not be caused at least by the defects of the brain catecholamine metabolism. While, adrenal tyrosine hydroxylase activity was elevated significantly in the deficient group without an increase of the adrenal weight. The similar results were obtained in the animals suffered from aminopterine induced folic acid deficiency. The enhancement of the enzyme activity seemed to be attributed to the change of catecholamine metabolism of the adrenal medulla which might be caused by the abnormal activity of central sympathetic nervous system in the folic acid deficient animal.

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We investigated the factors related to taste, the process and the motives of one's taste in order to make a behavioral approach to the problem.
The methods were as follows.
Inquiries about 1456 girl students (age 18-20) in all districts of Japan and 600 people in and around Tokyo were made in June 1971.
The questionnaire was printed on punch card.
The subject under investigation was fish of which horse mackerel was chosen. The cookery of horse mackerel was grouped into six types—“raw”, “boiled with soy”, “broiled with salt”, “fried”, “meunière” and “dried”.
The levels of taste were divided into four grades—“care for”, “neither care for nor dislike” “dislike” and “have no experience of eating”.
The methods of analyses were the third type of quantification, presumption of the percentage, χ² method, Rigit method and t tests.
The results were as follows.
1. Environmental factors and taste.
According to the geographical groups divided by the presence of the sea and regional groups divided by the yield of horse mackerel, in case the districts were not surrounded by the sea having a small yield of horse mackerel, the percentage of those who cared for horse mackerel was high. As for the difference of the residential environment, industrial districts generally showed a high percentage of those who cared for it, and residential sections and commercial districts presented a marked contrast to industrial districts.
As for the home environment, in case of the grandmother living in the same house preparing meals, many tended to dislike “boiled with soy sauce”. Concerning the occupations of parents, whether the mother was a working woman or not had greater influence on the formation of children's taste than occupations of the father.
2. Psychological factors (character trait and character type) and taste.
According to the trait of character by the Y-G Personal Inventory, it could be observed that levels of taste varied with character types. We might possibly assume that the levels of taste of E-type was low, and that of D-type was high.
3. Physiological factors (sex and age) and taste.
The percentage of taste of men were generally higher than that of women. That is because men are apt to take horse mackerel with Sake (Japanese Wine). People at older age inclined to have a preference for it, especially showing a marked tendency to care for “broiled with salt” and “dried”.
4. The reasons of taste and association observed from the sensual factors and psychological factors. Good taste was one of the reasons why girl students, high school students and the general public cared for horse mackerel. For “dislike” girl students and high school students attributed their dislike to the smell and psychological reasons, and the general public to the smell and bad taste.
Association.
The words of association varied with likes or dislikes. We could group the cookery into two types—seasonal cookery and cookery in all seasons.
5. The change of taste.
One's taste varies. We observed many people who changed taste grade from dislikes to likes. In general, they tended to change their taste grade during junior high school and senior high school days. It may be concluded that nutritional education adapted towards one's taste will be needed.
6. The patterns of one's taste from multi-dimensional analysis. The correlation ratios between the answers obtained and answerers were high.
The patterns of the levels of taste and types of cookery were made clear by checking the answers.
The pattern of the individual relevant factors was not clear, but we could get a vague idea.

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A survey of food preference of women college students on 178 kinds of food was carried out in 1975 by means of the hedonic scale. Women students preferred fruits, cakes, sushi, vegetable salads, pizza, gratin, fried prawn, ice cream, and fruits parfait very much; while they seemed to dislike beer, sake (Japanese Wine), raw eggs, and tomato juice.
Food preference of 151 kinds of food was compared with that obtained from our previous results of 1969. Analysis of variance revealed that the difference in food preference in 1969 and 1975 was as follows; curry rice, sandwich, consomme soup, biscuits, udon (Japanese noodles), sweet potatoes, brocolli and pumpkin were more preferred in 1975 than 1969, while seaweeds (nori), lemonade, chewing gum and sour milk beverage were undesirable in 1975 than 1969.

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