Watcha eating?

[IslandTractor]

Interesting comment. When I needed to find nutritional information, and I mean specific in terms of acceptable fat or salt content, all I got were generalities by people I figured should know. So I kept asking different people and kept getting vague and non-specific answers. I don't give up easy but finally sort-of gave up and did the research myself. And that is the answer, you have to do the leg-work on your own. Check, cross check and verify.

Nutrition is not the forte of most MDs to be sure. They get paid for procedures and visits, not talk or counselling so they emphasize diagnosis and treatment rather than prevention/counsel. Nutritionists in hospitals know the carb/fat/protein stuff but they don't know the clinical correlations with preventive medicine very well. Sadly, the most accessible information on the correlation of health and nutrition is left up to independent and non reviewed websites that are basically free to publish whatever they want including fairly outrageous stretches (organic good, GMO bad etc) that may or may not be true but definitely do not have adequate data to buttress the claims. The FDA is hampered by Congress and industry so even though they should be providing both research and guidance, they tend to stay away from anything that would cause conflict with big agriculture (they cannot even tighten controls on tobacco so you can imagine their lack of power to deal with beans vs beef issues).

 

[IslandTractor]

Ok thanks. So the 2% is the difference between cholesterol levels of one point and that is your incentive for not going on a <10% fat diet?
Does anything in the studies address a diet <10 fat, I know AHA does not?

The incentive for me is summarized in these two paragraphs:

"These mechanical interventions treat only the symptoms, not the disease. It is therefore not surprising that patients who receive these interventions often experience progressive disease, graft shutdown, restenosis, more procedures, progressive disability, and death from disease. Thus, the leading killer of men and women in Western civilization is being left untreated. What is being practiced is "palliative cardiology": nontreatment of heart disease leading to disease extension and frequently an eventual fatal outcome.

In contrast, a 5-year experience has shown excellent results in patients with severe coronary artery disease who followed a plant-based diet containing <10% fat and who took cholesterol-lowering medication. 14 During this arrest and reversal therapy their lipid levels fell significantly, they experienced no new coronary events, and angiography showed that their disease had stabilized and in some cases selectively reversed. The goal at study onset in 1985 had been to achieve a total serum cholesterol of <150 mg/dl, the level seen in cultures where coronary artery disease is virtually absent.3"
Updating a 12-Year Experience With Arrest and Reversal Therapy for Coronary Heart Disease (An Overdue Requiem for Palliative Cardiology)

The >10% is a radical dietary change but I am not trying to prevent heart disease - I have it. I am trying to slow it down, or stop it, or reverse it. I cannot see anyone doing this lifestyle change just to prevent it. That is why I don't try to change anyones diet, I just interject what I must do. Consider yourself very fortunate if you do not have heart disease. If you do have heart disease my best advise is to follow my lead. I know of none in the medical profession that would disagree with me.

TXDon, there is a difference between the general population and someone like yourself who has documented heart disease as well as a strong family history. My comments are not aimed at dissuading you from continuing a successful and acceptable diet regimen. I am more interested in how strong the data is that would suggest that everyone would benefit and that is where the very low fat diet data is lacking. The link you give above is an example of the problem. That is a page written by a single physician who is trying to sell books. He touts his success with a couple of dozen patients over ten years. Bupkiss. I know there is better data out there but it still amounts to relatively small studies with highly selected patients. Very little data on larger populations. What it amounts to in comparison to tobacco for example, is that you could easily demonstrate a benefit from smoking cessation if you got a highly motivated group to quit and followed them carefully for compliance. You get much less of an effect if the Surgeon General just says, as he/she has for decades, that you should not smoke period.

One of the statements that is made frequently by you and by the websites you link is the very dramatic point that "no one with a cholesterol of less than 150 has died in the Framingham Heart Study". I rather doubt that. I looked up the reference for that statement which was published way back in 1977 at which point the FHS was very young and it may have been true at that point. Do you have additional data to support that statement about absence of deaths due to MI in people with cholesterol lower than 150?

My point about the limited benefit of getting one's cholesterol much below 160 is based on the chart in the reference I posted earlier. They use a simple point system to determine risk of MI in the next ten years and, logically, the single most powerful factor is simply age. At age 60 you get ten points just for being around that long. The difference in their scoring for someone with a cholesterol lower than 160 versus between 160-200 was only one more point. That translated as I recall to risk of MI for someone with score of ten total points to be 10% but someone with the additional point for cholesterol 160-200 has a risk of 12%. It is not as you stated in your reply that risk goes up 2% for every point of cholesterol. It is one point (or 2% higher risk of MI in ten years) if your cholesterol is somewhere between 160-200 rather than below 160. Those estimates may well not be relevant for someone who has already well established heart disease but may be more relevant for the rest of us than the select studies you refer to.

 

[IslandTractor]

TXDon, Another point. I believe you and certainly the author of the website you frequently link to (heartattackproof.com) often refer to the "China Study". I was not familiar with that so I looked it up. Hogwash! These guys are bozos. They cobbled together a ridiculous database based on deaths in China in 1973 (anyone recall the impact of the Chairman Mao on academics and the medical profession in that era??? Does anyone believe there were actually 250,000 competent autopsies done or that there were ANY trained cardiologists in rural China in that era????) and correlated it with a survey on diet in rural China ten years later then published a book they tout as being the "Most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted" (Bull!!!) with a tiny publisher who publishes no other science work. This is a horrible example of how the internet becomes a means for dissemination of utter BS and how reasonable people can be hoodwinked. The fact that the website you link to is run by a fraud does not mean that very low fat diets are not effective but it does point out that there is very very little legitimate data to support this fairly radical and very difficult ultra low fat diet. Dean Ornish is a promoter at this point though he has done some decent small studies. I don't consider him a fraud like the people who run heartattackproof.com. However, there are serious criticisms of his diet and we just don't yet have the data to know if it is really effective in the long term or if it can be a practical diet for the average American. Here is a brief review paper that I think puts the various diets, including Ornish's, into reasonable perspective. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312230/pdf/bumc0013-0351.pdf

 

[J F]

Swmbo actually had two nights off in a row, so we grilled some burgers/potatoes/asparagus on Sun, then made a form of chicken cordon bleu last night (used canadian bacon, pepperjack cheese, and a small amount of bleu cheese).

Never made it before, came out really good (thanks, youtube)...but a huge amount of dirty dishes to do.

Worth it though, happy wife, happy life.

 

[brin]

Jay....you eat well...and it appears to me you have a balanced diet....We meat eaters have to stick together before someone sticks a carrot in our mouths...or worse...:licking::laughing:

 

[J F]

:laughing: Thanks Bob. It's grilled chicken salads the next couple of nights, with light dressing (maybe light....some of that crapola the wife picks up is really bad (really bad). Some of the Ken's Steakhouse light stuff is actually pretty good.

 

[brin]

:laughing: Thanks Bob. It's grilled chicken salads the next couple of nights, with light dressing (maybe light....some of that crapola the wife picks up is really bad (really bad). Some of the Ken's Steakhouse light stuff is actually pretty good.

Now that Ken's steakhouse blue cheese is about as good as it gets...Sounds like we eat about the same things with moderation as often as we can stand it...

 

[/pine]

It's funny about some of those bleu cheese dressings that say "chunky" and the squeeze opening at the top is no bigger than about 3/16"...!

 

[toppop52]

If bleu cheese was the only thing that made us fat, I'd be as skinny as Olive Oyl!

 

[econometrics]

Just had this immaculate morsel for lunch in DFW. The "Locals Only" - made like a Texas burger should be! Jalepenos, American cheddar, onions, mustard, bacon and most importantly...NO MAYO!

Finished her off with a tasty Pearl Light! (Yes, it still exists!)

Off-Site Kitchen in Dallas. Very highly recommended!