How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

"Typical Afghan civilians and soldiers would have been 140 pounds or so as adults. And when we operated on them, what we were aware of was the absence of any fat or any adipose tissue underneath the skin," Patterson says. "Of course, when we operated on Canadians or Americans or Europeans, what was normal was to have most of the organs encased in fat. It had a visceral potency to it when you could see it directly there."

In a conversation on Fresh Air, Patterson tells Terry Gross that the effects of urbanization are making people everywhere in the world both fatter and sicker.

"Type 2 diabetes historically didn't exist, only 70 or 80 years ago," says Patterson. "And what's driven it, of course, is this rise in obesity, especially the accumulation of abdominal fat. And the diabetes epidemic correlates to a strain on health care systems around the globe, says Patterson.

"No country in the world has the resources to continue to treat diabetics the way that they're being treated now, if the prevalence rates increase at the rates that they're increasing for much longer," he says. "When you look at the curves, it's clear how unsustainable it is. In 20 or 30 years, everybody on [Saipan] will either be a dialysis patient or a dialysis nurse unless something fundamental is done about the rise in diabetes. That's no less true in Canada and in Samoa and Hawaii, and even in Omaha and Toronto.

rocky mtn thyroid center wrote: Hey Sci Chi-

Good that you posted this. More people need to be aware of the exact garbage that they put into their mouths, has an exact effect on your body's physiology. There is such a disconnect between these things among most Americans. An example of this is gluten. There are very few people(approx 20 %) whose body does not improve with a gluten free diet.
OH, Waaaaaah! There is nothing to eat if you take my precious gluten away from me!!!!

Give me a break. There are tons of things that are healthy to eat. Do the testing and investigate it for yourself. That is being responsible for your own health.

The interesting thing is the emotional connection to food that people have. Gluten in foods being one of them.

Why?

Well, several reasons, not the least of which is one of the byproducts of gluten digestion is gluteomorphin, an opioid like chemical that attaches to receptors in the brain causing a true addiction to gluten.

same goes for another weird food in America...... pasteurized milk.

I think I'll write an article on this. Thanks again for the post.

Dr. T

Over on Civil Eats, Andrea Jezovit has put together a terrific interactive chart http://civileats.com/2011/04/05/where-d ... fographic/ on the U.S. diet. Using USDA data for "average daily calories available per capita, adjusted for spoilage and waste," it tracks our eating habits since 1970, separating our foodstuffs into basic categories: grains, dairy, vegetables, fruits, proteins ("meat, eggs, and nuts"), added sugars, and added fats.

For me, the most interesting categories are the latter two.

Jump forward to 2008 (the last year for which there are figures), and you find that the food system cranked out 2,673 calories per person. That's an impressive 23 percent jump from the 1970 number -- even more impressive when you recall that it's a per capita number and U.S. population rose significantly over that period. This is powerful evidence that the cheap-food policy instituted by Nixon-era USDA chief Earl Butz succeeded dramatically. In an age of maximum production of corn and soy, the U.S. food system became a calorie-generating juggernaut.

As for added fats and sugars, their 2008 levels reached 459 and 641, respectively, for a total of 1,100 calories. That's a 35 percent jump over the 1970 level -- and represents 41 percent of total calories available to U.S. consumers in 2008.

So, what is all this telling us? Here's a simple conclusion: If the food processing industry simply cut added sugars and fats by half in calorie terms -- from 1,100 calories to 550 -- total caloric availability would return to 1970 levels: an era that preceded the recent surge in diet-related maladies like obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

It's interesting to me that here in the United States, the diet promoted by the sustainable food movement is largely patterned on the old Mediterranean style. People generally have to pay a premium to attain it, and a wealth of science shows it to be quite healthy. (Note that a diet similarly stripped of added fats and sugars seems to help prevent ADHD in children.) The diet championed by the food industry and its marketers is cheaper, but a wealth of evidence suggests it makes people sick and miserable.