Biography

Alan Howard was a nutritional researcher, entrepreneur and philanthropist with research interests in atherosclerosis (thickening of arteries associated with coronary heart disease), obesity, and nutritional research related to eye health (macular degeneration) and brain heath (Alzheimer’s disease). His inventions and patents related to very low-calorie diets were commercialised as the Cambridge diet and enabled him to establish the Howard Foundation to fund biomedical research and a number of projects at Downing College, Cambridge.

Howard studied natural sciences and obtained a PhD in immunology while a student at Downing College, Cambridge. He trained further as a nutritionist at the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, Cambridge, and continued his research in the departments of Pathology (1960-1973), and Medicine (1973-1984), concluding his academic career as a College Lecturer in Nutritional Research (1983-1982).

His commercial endeavours began in the latter half of the 1960s with the high-protein Cambridge Formula Loaf manufactured by Spillers. From 1973 to 1980 Howard ran a lipid clinic at Addenbrookes Hospital and developed with Ian Baird at Middlesex Hopspital a low-calorie diet formula designed for patients; this was used in outpatients clinics, then became available without prescription. Howard then worked with a representative of the Dutch Company Organon International to commercialise this diet with patents granted in 1977. The product was licensed to a Californian Company, Cambridge Plan International, which launched it in 1980 in the US as the Cambridge diet, marketing and selling the product by mail order and then network marketing. Two years later, Howard established the Howard Foundation with his son Jon and in 1984 they established with Alan’s brother, Roger, Cambridge Manufacturing Company Limited and other commercial entities owned by the Howard Foundation. CPI filed for administration in the US in 1983 and in 1986 a Howard Foundation Company bought out CPI's international rights, with the ‘Cambridge Diet’ remaining a separate entity in the US. Throughout the second half of the 1980s the diet was sold by direct marketing and distributors, with the UK headquarters and export function residing in the manufacturing company in Corby, Northants, by the 2000s. In 2005 the remaining businesses were sold by a management buyout and the Cambridge Diet continues as the 1: 1 Diet by Cambridge Weight Plan. Howard’s work on the diet led to several publications including The Cambridge Diet a Manual for Health Professionals (MIT Press). He was active in the scientific community, becoming, in 1967, secretary of the Obesity Association (later The Obesity Society of Great Britain and now the Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO)). He organised several international scientific conferences on obesity and very low-calorie diets. The Foundation funded the COAG trace elements laboratory at Papworth Hospital from 1991 to 2000. In the 1990s, Howard worked with researchers at Florida International University to develop a commercial nutritional product to prevent age-related macular degeneration. From 2009, Howard collaborated with the Macular Pigment Research Group at the Waterford Institute, Ireland, and then became interested in nutritional aspects of Alzheimer’s disease.

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