| Typically, the western diet contains an excess of protein—especially animal protein. The nutrition plan I recommend provides a variety of healthy plant proteins, somewhere between 50 and 70 grams every day. That is entirely adequate for a healthy lifestyle.
Could a low cholesterol level be dangerous for my health?
Some years ago, there were reports that low blood cholesterol levels might be associated with lung, liver, or colon cancer and that they might also contribute to accidental deaths and suicide. |
Ray D. Strand
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 The essential fats and fiber provide added nutrients that are usually missing in the western diet. nutrients to the cell in a complete and balanced fashion. Then and only then will the cell have everything it needs to operate at its optimal capacity.
Protecting Your Health
Nutritional supplementation is really about health, not disease. Attacking the root cause of chronic degenerative disease is true preventive medicine. I realize that most of my readers enjoy good health and want to continue. |
| Omega-6 fatty acids are abundant in the western diet; they are in our meats, dairy products, and processed foods. We get omega-3 fatty acids from vegetable oils such as flaxseed, canola, pumpkin, and soybean oil. These fats are also found in such cold-water fish as mackerel, sardines, salmon, and tuna. As you might guess, the average American consumes a few more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s—a lot more, in fact. On average we consume a ratio of 20:1 or even 40:1 of these fats in our diet! |
| But I truly believe insulin resistance is the result of the western diet. Though we focus heavily on cutting back on fats, our love affair with carbohydrates continues. What many Americans don't fully realize is that carbohydrates are simply long chains of sugar that the body absorbs at various rates. Did you know white bread, white flour, pasta, rice, and potatoes release their sugars into the bloodstream even faster than table sugar? It's true. This is why such foods are called high-glycemic. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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 The higher your resting insulin level, the more your liver "thinks" that winter is coming and therefore it better keep churning out more fat. Our western diet is so full of sugars and refined grains, which behave exactly like sugars, that most of us are sending out this message 24/?. In fact, any sweet substance, even an artificial sweetener, tells your computer program that sugar is on the way, so please produce insulin. No wonder no study has ever shown that sugar substitutes have any benefit for weight loss, and that even just the tasfe of sweetness raises insulin levels.8-11 spring. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 Moreover, a higher rate of cavities appears suddenly in countries that change from diets traditionally low in sugar to a western diet high in sugar. In a comparison of ninety countries, the amount of sugar in the diet was found to account for 28 percent of the causes of dental cavities.1
Pure sugar is not the only food that fuels the growth of dental plaque. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 Likewise, countries that adopt a western diet and become more industrialized, but don't have the same vaccination program as we have in the United States, tend to develop allergies and autoimmune disease at the same high rates of illness that we do. Moreover, she asserts, "The hygiene hypothesis cannot explain all the babies who are born today with allergies. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Then he found that within the first generation in places where the western diet had moved in with jams and sugars and powdered milks and whatever, they started seeing all kinds of diseases happening. Many cavities. Dental arches falling. Dental arches changing. They even found that the hips of women were getting narrower so they could not have children as easily.
Mike: They found aggressive mental disorders, too.
Dr. Liers: Oh yes, the mental disorders and tuberculosis, you can see from that perspective it can happen amazingly fast. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Data to support beneficial effects of protein in the diet lower or higher than the typical western diet (approximately 15-20% of energy from protein) are lacking. The position of the American Diabetes Association recommends 10-20% of energy from protein, with the lower amount being recommended for patients with overt nephropathy [12].
In the liver, amino acids that are not required to replace body proteins, particularly nonessential amino acids, are deaminated [36]. The amino group is condensed with carbon dioxide to form urea, which is then carried to the kidneys and excreted in the urine. |
Michael Pollan
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 They called these the Western diseases and, though the precise causal mechanisms were (and remain) uncertain, these observers had little doubt these chronic diseases shared a common etiology: the western diet.
What's more, the traditional diets that the new Western foods displaced were strikingly diverse: Various populations thrived on diets that were what we'd call high fat, low fat, or high carb; all meat or all plant; indeed, there have been traditional diets based on just about any kind of whole food you can imagine. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Unfortunately, omega-3 fatty acids have been depleted by our western diet since the early twentieth century. At the same time, the rate of depression in the United States has been increasing, and the age of onset has been decreasing," adds Dr. Stoll, noting that in Japan and other countries where fish consumption is high, both depression and heart disease rates are low.
Biotechnology pioneer Barry Sears, Ph.D., author of the bestselling Zone books, also extols fish oil as "the best drug to elevate mood. If you're eating a lot of simple carbohydrates, you're probably not eating much fish. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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| Western diet, their birth rate doubled, but adults now die extremely prematurely from diabetes and heart disease.1819
THE REAL CAUSE OF VASCULAR DISEASE
Now that you understand this concept, imagine you were the master genetic computer programmer. To activate killer genes, what programs would you write? Let's start with coronary artery disease, and vascular disease in general, which results from "calluses" accumulating in our blood vessels. Traditional thinking holds that the Western high-fat diet causes fat to stick to our arteries. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| Commentary: Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century." Commentary. American journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, no. 2 (2005): 341-54.
Diabetes in Control. "Low-Carb Diet Controls Diabetes Without Weight Loss or Insulin Use." http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/modules. php?name=News&file=article&sid=3601.
Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/preventionprogram/.
Dominguez, Alex. "Waistline Good Indicator of Diabetes Risk." AP News Wire, March 22, 2005. http://life.channels.netscape.ca/life/article.adp? |
| Commentary: Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81 (2005): 341-54.
Fleck, Fiona. "WHO Challenges Food Industry in Report on Diet and Health." British Medical Journal 326 (March 2003): 515.
General Mills. "Our Brands: Cocoa Puffs." http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/brands/brand .aspx?catID=50.
Heil, Emily. "Hill Brings Dietary Guidelines to Boil." Congress Daily, October 1, 2003.
Iglesias, Gerardo. "Bitter Sugar with Bruno Ribeiro de Paiva." Agricultura Brazil, April 27, 2004. http://www.rel-uita. |
| Commentary: Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, no. 2 (2005): 341-54. http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Origins%20Paper%20Final.pdf.
Dash, Eric. "Next Up: Low-Carb Nachos?" New York Times, June 27, 2004.
Department of Health and Human Services. "HHS, ADA Warn Americans of 'Pre-diabetes', Encourage People to Take Healthy Steps to Reduce Risks." March 27, 2002. http://www.hhs.gov/news/ press/2002pres/20020327.html.
Drewnowski, Adam. "Fat and Sugar: An Economic Analysis. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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| Breast cancer and the Western diet: Role of fatty acids and antioxidant vitamins. Eur. J. Cancer 34, 1852-1856.
142. van 't Veer, P., Strain, J. J., Fernandez-Crehuet, J., et al. (1996). Tissue antioxidants and postmenopausal breast cancer: The European Community Multicentre Study on Antioxidants, Myocardial Infarction, and Cancer of the Breast (EURAMIC). Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 5, 441^147.
143. Homer, N. K., and Lampe, J. W. (2000). Potential mechanisms of diet therapy for fibrocystic breast conditions show inadequate evidence of effectiveness. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 100, 1368-1380. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| Cordain, who presented his fascinating findings linking acne to the western diet at the 2004 annual meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology. "The same thing happens when Eskimos start eating Western foods. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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| Typical acid loads produced on a western diet are on the order of 1 mEq of acid/kg/day. Investigators have attempted to estimate the renal acid load of diets as a measure of acid-base load by taking into account the mineral and protein composition of foods [63]. Thus, diets high in fruits and vegetables that contain potassium and produce an alkaline ash and those richer in plant proteins than animal proteins, which contribute more S-containing amino acids, have been promoted for better bone health through improving acid-base balance. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It's an incredible study about the dangers of the western diet and the promise of plant-based foods for preventing and reversing disease.
Information from the USDA (reprinted)
Editor's note: Please understand that no official body in medicine or nutrition -- not even the USDA -- currently recognizes any difference whatsoever between cooked vs. raw fruits and vegetables. This incredible oversight will, in time, prove to be a monumental mistake in the understanding of nutrition. |
Gabriel Cousens
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 Juice Feasting also reverses another significant and common problem from our calorie-rich, nutrient-poor Western diet: nutrient deficiencies.
CLEANSE
Cleansing means weight reduction, but there are many components of weight, not just the fat around our mid-section. |
| They are part of the indigenous diets, especially of the Native Americans, that made diabetes a rarity before these cultures began to accept the western diet in the 1940s and their rate of diabetes began to soar.
?Millet
?Brown rice
?Oats
?Buckwheat
?Amaranth
?Mung beans
?Garbanzo beans
?Pinto beans
?White tepary beans
?Green beans
?String beans
? |
| The South Asian Indians and the Pima Indians have a genetic predisposition to NIDDM, but it didn't really manifest until they switched in the 1940s to a western diet. The epidemic of NIDDM in these groups seems to be directly related to the dramatic increase in total calories of refined carbohydrates, total fat, and in the unbalanced omega-6 versus omega-3 ratios.
In summary, trans-fatty acids are indeed also a problem, as well as an increase in omega-6 versus omega-3 ratio of fatty acids. |
| When people from these indigenous cultures hit the western diet, rates of Type-2 diabetes soar. Dr. Barnard's work emphasizes that a diet high in fat, especially cooked animal fat (saturated fat), will increase the rate of diabetes.
Dr. Barnard's insight is certainly something I support as a live-food vegan: that the junk fats, trans-fatty acids, and cooked saturated animal fats tend to block and disorganize the cell membranes in a way that disrupts the insulin receptors in the cells. |
| The rate skyrocketed when genetics and a diabetogenic western diet collided. The rate of diabetes is dramatically affected by the genetics for diabetes in a particular culture, and many scientists believe genetics may explain the obesity problem among Native Americans. The first U.S. researcher to learn about the Mexican Pimas was Leslie O. |
Mark Sircus
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 The widespread shortage of magnesium, not calcium, in the western diet is attributed to the high rates of sudden-death heart attack.
Adequate levels of magnesium are essential for the heart muscle. Those who die from heart attacks have very low magnesium but high calcium levels in their heart muscles. Patients with coronary heart disease who have been treated with large amounts of magnesium survived better than those with other drug treatments. Magnesium dilates the arteries of the heart and lowers cholesterol and fat levels. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| But by the 1920s, the Eskimos had begun to adopt Western ways and a western diet, Stefansson noted in his 1960 report Cancer: A Disease of Civilization ? And so it began: In 1933, an Eskimo died of liver cancer in Alaska. Two years later, a second Eskimo passed away of colon cancer in Labrador. And from that time on, death rates from cancer have risen steadily in the frozen north.
Actually, the cancer-sugar connection was discovered even earlier, points out Joseph Mercola, D.O., founder of www.mercola.com. "In fact, already in 1931, the German scientist Dr. |
Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon
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 THE INFLUENCE OF FOOD VOLUME ON SATIETY
Most foods in the modern western diet are packed with calories for the amount of volume they occupy in the stomach. This means you will have a tendency to eat far too many calories before your stomach feels at all full. For example, a Wendy's Classic double with cheese and a large order of fries occupies about two cups of volume in your stomach, but contributes about 1,300 calories to your diet. |
Michael Pollan
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| Her focus instead was on larger dietary patterns, and while this approach has its limitations (we can't extract from such a study precisely which component of the western diet we need to adjust in order to blunt its worst effects), it has the great virtue of escaping the welter
*According to Walter C. Willett, only 3. |
Mike Adams
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 Consider this: coconut oil was consumed in very large quantities by the native populations of Hawaii, the Philippines, and the South Pacific islands, all of which demonstrated remarkably low rates of heart disease up until the time they were exposed to the high-carbohydrate, highly refined western diet. Once the western diet arrived on their shores, they began to experience all the common diseases we now see as epidemic in modern society. But their native diet, which was high in coconut oil, produced no such disease. |
Elaine Magee
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 Omega-6 fatty acids do have a place in healthy meals; it's just that in the typical western diet, we get so many more of them than we do omega-3s that we might be cutting ourselves off from the protective and powerful effects of omega-3s. While omega-3s partner with enzymes to reduce cancer-promoting compounds, omega-6s pair with an enzyme that promotes inflammation, encourages cells to multiply, and decreases cancer cell death. ţSome studies have shown that omega-6s can cause small decreases in HDL cholesterol levels, compared with monounsaturated fats. |
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