There were three studies. In the first study, the entire 1,894 subjects of the Normative Aging Study of the Veterans Administration were used. The study was a cross-sectional and longitudinal investigation of the influence of diet and obesity on the production of hyperinsulinism and increased levels of catecholamines, and the relationship of these intermediate outcomes to cardiovascular end points, namely postural change in blood pressure and occurrence of myocardial infarction. Subsets of subjects from the upper and lower quartiles of body mass index and from the upper and lower quartiles of waist/hip ratios were used in the second and third studies.