ATLANTIC CANADA'S SORRY OBESITY AND CANCER STATISTICS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM
BY CHARLES W. MOORE
© 1998 Charles W, Moore
Are Atlantic Canadians the fattest people in the world? Canada, the U.S., Britain,
and Germany have the world's highest rates of obesity, and a recent Pollara survey
found Atlantic Canadians the most overweight people in Canada. Three out of five
in the region (61%) are obese, compared with a national rate of 51%, and 45% in British
Columbia.
It's no mystery why Atlantic Canadians are fatter--we eat more fat. AtlantiCa residents
get 50 to 60 percent of their caloric intake from fat according to the study--up
to twice Health Canada's recommendation, and three to four times the proportion of
fat considered healthy by diet theorists like Drs. Dean Ornish and Nathan Pritikin.
Economics doubtless has something to do with it as well. AtlantiCa is the poorest
region of Canada, and studies consistently indicate that, on average, the richer
you are the thinner you are, and the poorer you are, the fatter you will be. One
survey found that obesity was five times greater among people in the lowest income
brackets than the highest.
Why are poor people fatter than richer people? In a word: diet. The higher one's income,
the more likely one is to eat lots of vegetables, legumes, grains, fruit, fish, lean
cuts of meat, and low-fat poultry dishes, and the less likely to consume fatty fast
foods, greasy fried foods, packaged convenience foods, cheaper and fattier meats
like hamburger and hot dogs, high-calorie baked stuff, white flour products, and
sugary junk food, all of which are typical standard fare in the diets of lower-income
people.
The Pollara survey discovered that 42 percent of people in AtlantiCa think body weight
has little or no influence on health. Wrong! Obese people have greater risk of heart
disease, stroke, hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, arthritis, and some
types of cancer (EG: breast, colon, prostate). High-fat diets result in faster growth
and earlier sexual maturity. The average age of puberty in the mainly grain-fed 17th
Century was 17--vs. 12 to 13 today. Early maturation and sexual activity is linked
to a constellation of adverse health risks, including earlier aging, and premature
death. .
Canadian cancer rates are among the world's highest according to Statistics Canada.
Canadian women suffer roughly three times the breast cancer rate of Japanese women.
The high rate of colorectal cancer among Canadians is almost certainly due to diet,
says Barbara Whylie of the Canadian Cancer Society. The rate for Canadian women is
second only to that of black U.S. women and colorectal cancer occurs in Canadian
men four times more often than among men in Japan, Ecuador, China or Zimbabwe. "The
message for us is that we should be trying to change our diet," says Tony Fields
of Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute. "If we ate far more fruits and vegetables and
a lot less meat and fat we would probably see quite a drop in colorectal cancer."
The increasing prevalence of obesity among children is especially worrisome. It is
believed that 90 percent of diabetes today is linked to excess body weight, which
in turn is caused by eating more calories than the body uses. Autopsies on children
killed in accidents have documented serious arterial clogging in 15 year olds, and
cholesterol deposits on the aortic walls of kids as young as two or three. Canadian
children typically get as much as 22 percent of their total daily calories from snack
foods and fast foods. The present generation of children is the fattest in history,
due to poor eating habits, which studies indicate cause fat to begin accumulating
in the arteries by age 10. "Children aged three to five can have fatty streaks in
their arteries," according to Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai, chairwoman of the Heart and
Stroke Foundation's medical advisory committee.
A Foundation study released in February, '98, found that only one in five Canadian
children eats the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables, and that white
bread and sugary cereals are the popular choices among kids. Only 28 per cent of
subjects ate mostly whole-grain breads and cereals, and some 40 per cent eat junk
food more than three times a week. "People are used to thinking that junk food is
OK for them because they see it available everywhere," says foundation spokesperson,
Alison Heath.
What to do? There's nothing complicated about achieving and maintaining a healthy
body weight for your build and constitution, but that doesn't mean it's easy, and
there are no shortcuts. Temporary diets are a waste of time and effort. Only permanent
lifestyle change incorporating regular exercise and a healthy diet will work.
The operative question is: what constitutes a healthy diet? A controversial topic,
but I can share with you what I've learned reading well over 100 books, hundreds
of articles, and countless scientific studies on diet and health over the past decade
or so. Some of these suggestions differ radically with what you might hear from professional
dieticians or read in Canada's food guide, but they represent a consensus from many
physicians and researchers who have studied the relationship between diet and health.
Here goes:
For optimum health and ideal body weight, get regular exercise and eat a low-fat,
low protein, high-fibre, high complex carbohydrate diet. Which means:
(a) Eat no more than two servings per week of red meat, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk,
and other dairy products. Better yet, don't eat these foods at all.
(b) Don't eat foods or snacks containing refined sugar (white or brown). Your body's
nutritional requirement for sugar is zero. In fact, refined sugar is an anti-nutrient,
burning up nutrients to digest, and contributing nothing but empty calories.
(c) Eat lots of fresh green and yellow vegetables (especaily dark green leafy ones),
whole grains, pasta (but hold the fatty sauces), beans, and fresh fruits.
(d) Snack foods like candy, pastries, salad dressings, ice cream, cheese, etc. contain
large percentages of fat and often sugar as well. Stop eating them. Even better,
get out of the habit of snacking between meals entirely.
(e) Healthy fats (don't overdo it) include fish oils and cold pressed vegetable oil
(especially olive oil).
(f) Get your protein from fish, beans, and grains. Most North Americans eat more than
twice as much protein as they need for good health, according to World Health Organization
recommendations.
(g) Cut out sugary drinks like pop and fruit juice.
If this all sounds too radical, consider these points:
Dr. Nathan Pritikin studied tribes in Africa, New Guinea, Ecuador, and Mexico, all
of which eat diets containing less than 10 percent fat and protein respectively,
and about 80 percent complex carbohydrate (ie: whole grains). Rates of obesity and
coronary heart disease among these peoples are close to zero.
Women in less developed countries drink little or no milk, tend to have large families,
breast-feed extensively, and eat diets containing only 200-400 mg. of calcium daily
(one-half to one-quarter North American recommendations). Yet these women typically
have strong bones and teeth and virtually no incidence of osteoporosis. Where are
dental caries and osteoporosis endemic?--in the milk-guzzling Western countries.
Japanese people typically eat diets containing about 20 percent fat, have the world's
longest life expectancy; the lowest rate of heart disease for men and the second
lowest for women in the developed world; four times less breast cancer and five times
less prostate cancer than North Americans, as well as much lower rates of colon and
lung cancer.
In China, people actually consume 20% more calories per day than North Americans,
but North Americans are 25% fatter than the Chinese because 35% to 40% (or 50% to
60% in Atlantic Canada!) of their daily caloric intake comes from fat, versus only
15% fat for the Chinese. Seventy percent of the protein in North American diets is
animal-derived, while in China only 11% of protein consumed comes from animals.
A research study on Mexico's Tarahumara Indians illustrates the effect of diet choices
on cholesterol levels and obesity. The Tarahumeras normally eat a corn-based diet
with about 20% of the total calories coming from fat. They have superb health and
vitality, and little coronary heart disease.
For the study, the Tarahumaras ate a North American-style diet including cheese, butter,
eggs, white flour, soft drinks, sugar, and jelly. This "store food" diet averaged
3,400 to 4,100 calories per day with 43% fat, vs. 2,700 calories daily and 20% fat
in the Indians' normal diet. After five weeks, the Indians' blood cholesterol levels
had increased by an average of 31%, their low-density lipoprotein ("bad cholesterol")
levels by 39%, and they had gained an average of eight pounds each.
Healthy eating doesn't have to be expensive. The Chinese eat rice and the Tarahumeras'
staple is corn. Wealthy people are able to afford more interesting healthy food,
but poverty isn't the main impediment to eating a nutritious low-fat, high fibre
diet.
The real problem is that loading foods with fat is a cheap and easy way to make them
taste good--fat carries flavour and provides what the food industry calls "mouth
feel." It's tough to convince parents to deny their kids ice cream, sugary-fatty
confections and baked foods, hamburgers and hot dogs, cheese, fries, butter, or for
that matter to give up these tasty foods themselves. And of course, suggesting that
kids should limit milk consumption is heresy in a culture that worships at the altar
of the sacred cow.
Nevertheless, a report for the New England Journal of Medicine co-authored by epidemiologist
Walter Willett M.D., and lipid specialist Frank M. Sacks M.D., recommends that "the
optimum intake of cholesterol is probably zero, meaning the avoidance of all animal
[food] products.... It may well be that a strict vegetarian diet is optimal..."
In another NEJM report, Dr. Willett, who has conducted several major research studies
on the health effects of dietary fat, writes that "If you step back and look at the
data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero.
The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) urges that all children
above the age of two follow the same low-cholesterol, low animal fat diet recommended
for adults, a guideline endorsed by the American Heart Association, the American
Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association. Children should have
blood cholesterol levels of less than 170 mg/dl says the NHLBI (200 mg/dl for adults).
Some people might argue that if they had to eat the diet described above, life would
not be worth living, and they would sooner be overweight. That is of course a personal
choice. However, one advantage of grain and vegetable based diets is that, as Dr.
John MacDougall. MD notes in his book "The MacDougall Plan," one can usually eat
as much as one wants and still maintain an ideal body weight.
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