increasing the chance of several types of cancers, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease.

The template for metabolic reversal was the centre's namesake and founder, Nathan Pritikin who in 1956 at the age of 41 was told he had terminal coronary heart disease and was sent home to die.

Pritikin, an engineer by profession, would not accept the diagnosis; he set about studying cultures with low incidents of heart disease. "He was essentially his own guinea pig," Lehr said of Pritikin, who finally died at the age of 69 from leukaemia. "He essentially reversed himself."

By 1975, Pritikin had established his residential program of nutrition, exercise and lifestyle education. In 1977, when CBS's 60 Minutes did a TV show on Pritikin and followed a few heart disease clients who had been written off by their doctors only to improve dramatically under his regime, the centre was launched.

Pritikin's longest residential client - a Boston lawyer who arrived in a wheelchair

weighing 350lb - left two years later mobile, healthy, and weighing 170lb. For guests staying three weeks the results are no less startling; in a sample of 4,587 people, the programme showed an average drop of 23 per cent in total cholesterol and a 23 per cent drop in LDL 'bad' cholesterol. Triglycerides were reduced 33 per cent; 83 per cent lowered their blood pressure to normal levels and an average weight loss was 12lb.

In terms of long-term weight loss, a sampling of 4,500 who followed the Pritikin weight plan of low fat and high-fibre foods for an entire six-year study lost on average 66lb and kept the weight off.

Inevitably, these results have caught the attention of other indulgent far-flung communities. Next year, the Pritikin plan is being franchised in India and Singapore; Lehr is also in talks with the governments of Japan and the UAE. "We've been sort of right for 30 years," Lehr said. "The World Health Organisation and the Institute of Medicine and now the US Department of Agriculture have come closer to the Pritikin guidelines.