19 August 2011No cardiac disease, something slower and less enjoyable

http://us.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/19/heart.attack.proof.diet/index.html

The 'heart attack proof' diet?

By David S. Martin, CNN

August 19, 2011 12:11 p.m. EDT

          This appears to be yet another in a long series of attempts to promote dietary change in western society.  A physician notes something of interest, does some research, collates the data, publishes in a journal, and becomes a disciple of the vegetarian or vegan diet.  Along the way he attracts a few fans, writes a book for lay persons detailing the miraculous changes he’s seen; and, of course, appears on television promoting his new dietary philosophy.

Here’s the newest revision of the same lyric to different music.  We get this dance, largely because a neurosurgeon working for CNN has an elevated familial risk of cardio-vascular disease.  In hope of preventing his genetic time bomb’s detonation, he has joined the chorus for change. 

            “ For more than 20 years, the Cleveland Clinic doctor has tried to get Americans to eat like the Papua New Guinea highlanders, rural Chinese, central Africans and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico.

            “Follow his dietary prescription, the 77-year-old Esselstyn says, and you will be "heart attack proof" -- regardless of your family history.”

          Note, if you will, that three of the four groups listed as examples of how we should feed ourselves are subsistence diners.  The Tarahumara eat primarily corn and beans.  The Papua- New Guinea highlanders are subsistence farmers. The local diet is bland and very starch-intensive. Taro, Kau-Kau (sweet potato), imported rice and other vegetables are the daily staple diet for most people.  Rural Chinese eat primarily a rice and vegetable diet.  Central Africans subsist largely on grains, vegetables and fruit. 

          While these populations may have little or no cardiac disease they are subject to deficiency diseases, due to limited diet.  They may have little time for anything but their crops.  They routinely suffer from famine and environmentally based crop failures, as do modern farmers. 

          While I do not doubt the study’s results, I don’t think I am going to join the parade.  Vegetarian and vegan diets can be extremely monotonous and may predispose to dietary deficiencies.  I don’t care to lump myself into groups that include animal rights vegans. 

          But most importantly, I don’t believe that this diet is the grand solution to aging or immortality.  If we eliminate cardiac disease, we eliminate one of the reasonably quick exits on a path we all take.  We leave, instead, the much less rapid, more ignoble, dignity stealing diseases that the diet does not prevent.  Malignancies and degenerative diseases, those body-rotting, soul-stealing diseases and disorders are the ones that scare me more than a quick exit by MI. 

          Work on them all, promote good health, and promote reason in diet.  If all the earth’s population tried the vegan subsistence diet for a single year, we’d be out of the necessary foods.  And once we shifted worldwide to a plant-based diet, imagine the current scenario on Somalia enlarged to a global scale.  We may be able to ramp up crop production using modern agriculture methods.  Doing so, however, would require the elimination of the culture and lifestyle of millions of poor farmers in decades of impoverished nations.  We would either have to nationalize agriculture or allow uncheck, un-fettered capitalism to hold the world’s hungry hostage.  Neither of those less than desirable solutions would have a means to eliminate famine caused by drought, by floods, by fire, nor by insects.  Currently we see at least one of these Malthusian-like situations ravaging a part of the world now, leading to refugee camps and hundreds of thousands of deaths.   Globalize the means of producing plant-based diets and we may as well designate Central Asia, much of Africa, and even parts of the New World as permanent dust bowls, in permanent famines.  

          Granted, my response to this iteration of the plant-based, vegan diet is highly biased and extreme in my rejection of it.  But I love an occasional cheeseburger, Memphis-style, dry-rubbed ribs, and even Texas brisket.  Nothing beats a hot pastrami sandwich or blue-fin sashimi.  Something is going to cause my exit from this mortal coil.  I’d prefer to shuffle off with a satisfied appetite and a smile on my bacon-greasy lips. 

Shabbat Shalom!