Superfoods RX

Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your LifeBy Steven G. Pratt

Perennial

Copyright © 2005 Steven G. Pratt
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060535687

Chapter One

How Your Diet Is Killing You

The foods you eat every day, from the fast food you mindlessly consume to the best meals you savor in a top restaurant, are doing much more than making you fat or thin. Their effects on your body are making the difference between the development of chronic disease and a vigorous extended life. They can prevent or greatly reduce your risk of vision problems, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and a host of killers. These are not just vague promises; they are facts that are now supported by an impressiveand irrefutable body of research.

Most respectable scientists in the world today agree that at least 30 percent of all cancers are directly related to nutrition. Some would argue that the figure is as high as 70 percent.

For example, we know that the people who eat the most fruits and vegetablesare half as likely to develop cancer as those who eat the least amount of thesefoods.

It’s not just cancer that’s nutrition related: about half of all cardiovascular disease and a significant percentage of hypertension cases can be traced to diet as well. In the Nurses’ Health Study (an ongoing study ofover 120,000 female nurses, begun in Framingham, Massachusetts,in 1976), the nonsmoking women with a median daily intake of 2.7 servingsof whole grains were half as likely to suffer a stroke as other women in thestudy. Given this, it’s particularly alarming to learn that fewer than 8 percent of Americans eat this much whole grains.

Indeed, most of us are eating ourselves to death: only about 10 percent ofAmericans eat the foods that would enable them to be free of chronic disease andpremature death.

Our Western diets are literally killing us. While man evolved on a plant-based diet more than fifty thousand years ago,our modern diet — the one our parents ate and the one we’re eating — developed only during the pastfifty to eighty years. It is not serving us well. We humans are genetically “wired” for starvation, not an overabundance of food. Our genes are set forhunter-gatherer mode, and a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and lean, wild game, not for the majority of foods and beverages found in today’s supermarkets.

It has been estimated that 300,000 to 800,000 preventable deaths per year in the United States are nutrition related. These include deaths from atheroscleroticdisease, diabetes, and certain cancers.

Here are eleven disastrous developments in nutrition that are ruining your health and the health of most everyone in modern industrialized societies:

1. Increased portion sizes.

2. Decreased energy expenditure; people just don’t exercise enough.

3. Unhealthy balance of fats in the diet:an increase in saturated fat, omega-6 fatty acids, and trans-fatty acids, along with a huge decrease in omega-3 fatty acids.

4. An increase in consumption of processed cereal grains.

5. An overall decrease in fruit and vegetable intake from historical standards.

6. A decrease in lean meat and fish intake.

7. A decrease in antioxidant intake and calcium intake (especially from whole foods).

8. The unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats,which isassociated with a long list of chronic diseases.

9. A marked increase in refined sugar as an overall percentage of caloric intake.

10. A decrease in whole food consumption, which has led to a markeddecrease in phytonutrient intake.

11. A decrease in the variety of foods eaten.

    Few people, including health professionals, are aware of the significantrecent decline in our overall health status. More than 125 million Americans have at least one chronic condition like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, or glaucoma. The Centers for Disease Control estimates thatone-third of Americans who were born in 2000 will develop diabetes intheir lifetime. Sixty million Americans have more than one condition. It’sgetting worse every day. In 1996, estimates were made projecting the rateof chronic disease in the future.

    Four years later, in 2000, the number of people with chronic ailmentswas twenty million higher than had been anticipated. By the year 2020, aprojected one-quarter of the American population will be living with multiple chronic conditions, and estimated costs for managing these conditions will reach $1.07 trillion.

    The most shocking nugget of information in this dismal overview ofAmerican health is that the age of the “chronically ill” is declining. Abouthalf of chronically ill Americans are under age 45 and, stunningly, 15 percent of that number are children who are suffering from diabetes, asthma, developmental disabilities, cancer, and other disorders.

    As a doctor, I see the imperfections of the system every day. The generalunspoken assumption among many people is that you can eat whateveryou feel like eating and count on a pill or a surgery to take care of the fallout down the line. For many of us, the only diet-related concern, if wehave one, is weight control.

    Recognizing the crisis in pediatric health care, for the first time in the springof 2003, the American Heart Association has offered guidelines for screening kids. They include:Check a child’s blood pressure at every visit after age 3.Talk to kids about not smoking as early as age 9.Test cholesterol levels and blood fats in kids who are overweight or at risk.Review family history for signs of early heart disease.

    What’s the answer? Clearly, we need to do better if we want to live longer and avoid chronic disease …

    Continues…

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    Excerpted from Superfoods RXby Steven G. Pratt Copyright © 2005 by Steven G. Pratt. Excerpted by permission.
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