Freethought & Rationalism Archive

repoman · 01-12-2003, 03:15 AM

Article from the newest Scientific American encapsulates just about all of the basic suggestions I have been digging into on the net for the past 3 weeks and 30+ hours in a 30 minute read. So save yourself the time and trust that these guys know what they are talking about.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...33809EC588EEDF

some of the interesting points:

eating excess sugar is a stress on insulin system and has same effect on heart disease as eating the same amount of calories in saturated fat.

people who eat nuts are less likely to be obese

refined starches and potatoes(!) increase type2 diabetes

But the most surprising is the conclusions made when the writers looked at diseases and how closesy their own pyramid was followed:

Quote:

Can we show that our pyramid is healthier than the USDA's? We created a new Healthy Eating Index that measured how closely a person's diet followed our recommendations. Applying this revised index to our epidemiological studies, we found that men and women who were eating in accordance with the new pyramid had a lower risk of major chronic disease. This benefit resulted almost entirely from significant reductions in the risk of cardiovascular disease--up to 30 percent for women and 40 percent for men. Following the new pyramid's guidelines did not, however, lower the risk of cancer. Weight control and physical activity, rather than specific food choices, are associated with a reduced risk of many cancers.

This even applied to how much fat content the food had. Now this was a very general number crunching they did and many details can be fleshed out regarding cancer and specific foods and cooking preparations (boiling, grillng etc..). This is the point I want some input in, because maybe their pyramid is tuned for heart disease only and you could make an anticancer food pyramid somehow.

sakrilege · 01-12-2003, 05:29 AM

I eat nuts & whole grains everyday. I'm not so good at the veggies. So I'm mostly okay with the top half of the pyramid and could do better with the bottom half. And the daily exercise needs BIG improvement.

Thanks for the link, I heard an interview about this on the radio just last week.

jayh · 01-12-2003, 01:25 PM

I suspect that you would eventually get conflicting pyramids.

Relative strengths of diet influence is a factor, dietary factors in heart disease and diabetes are stronger than for cancer.

Jay

Undercurrent · 01-12-2003, 03:55 PM

I don't think it even makes sense to have a food pyramid for cancer in general. Heart disease pretty much has one root cause -- a buildup of plaque on the coronary arteries. It's a pretty good guess that if you have no buildup, you have little risk of heart disease, and it's resonable to expect that diet can be modified to control that buildup.

Cancers are caused by various things, a good swath of them non-dietary (smoking, heredity), or dietary in the sense of too many calories, rather than where the calories came from (obesity.) There's no known centralized intermediate cause that you can eliminate to lower the risk of all cancers.

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01-12-2003, 05:29 AM	#2
sakrilege Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Cleveland, OH, USA Folding@Home Godless Team Posts: 6,211	I eat nuts & whole grains everyday. I'm not so good at the veggies. So I'm mostly okay with the top half of the pyramid and could do better with the bottom half. And the daily exercise needs BIG improvement. Thanks for the link, I heard an interview about this on the radio just last week.

01-12-2003, 01:25 PM	#3
jayh Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 4,606	I suspect that you would eventually get conflicting pyramids. Relative strengths of diet influence is a factor, dietary factors in heart disease and diabetes are stronger than for cancer. Jay

01-12-2003, 03:55 PM	#4
Undercurrent Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Santa Fe, NM Posts: 2,362	I don't think it even makes sense to have a food pyramid for cancer in general. Heart disease pretty much has one root cause -- a buildup of plaque on the coronary arteries. It's a pretty good guess that if you have no buildup, you have little risk of heart disease, and it's resonable to expect that diet can be modified to control that buildup. Cancers are caused by various things, a good swath of them non-dietary (smoking, heredity), or dietary in the sense of too many calories, rather than where the calories came from (obesity.) There's no known centralized intermediate cause that you can eliminate to lower the risk of all cancers.

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