Is the Mediterranean all it is cut out to be?

[Guest guest]

Hi All, What do you make of the table at the bottom of:

http://www.okinawaprogram.com/ ?

It seems to me that the Mediterranean diet was poor for overall and especially

strokes.

And how does the below paper add to this idea?

Also, it seemed to me that heart disease and cancer are very different in their

patterns,

irrespective of overall mortality and longevity. Sweden has relatively high

heart

disease deaths.

I suppose that it could be said that things like infant mortality is a big

factor, but should

it not be in the case of Hong Kong too?

Cheers, Al.

Lipids 1997 Jul;32(7):745-51

Unusual effects of some vegetable oils on the survival time of stroke-prone

spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Huang MZ, Watanabe S, Kobayashi T, Nagatsu A, Sakakibara J, Okuyama H.

Preliminary experiments have shown that a diet containing 10% rapeseed oil

(low-erucic acid)

markedly shortens the survival time of stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive

(SHRSP) rats

under 1% NaCl loading as compared with diets containing perilla oil or soybean

oil. High-oleate

safflower oil and high-oleate sunflower oil were found to have survival

time-shortening activities

comparable to that of rapeseed oil; olive oil had slightly less activity. A

mixture was made of

soybean oil, perilla oil, and triolein partially purified from high-oleate

sunflower oil to adjust the

fatty acid composition to that of rapeseed oil. The survival time of this

triolein/mixed oil group

was between those of the rapeseed oil and soybean oil groups. When 1% NaCl was

replaced

with tap water, the survival time was prolonged by approximately 80%. Under

these conditions,

the rapeseed oil and evening primrose oil shortened the survival time by

approximately 40% as

compared with n-3 fatty acid-rich perilla and fish oil; lard, soybean oil, and

safflower oil with

relatively high n-6/n-3 ratios shortened the survival time by roughly 10%. The

observed unusual

survival time-shortening activities of some vegetable oils (rapeseed,

high-oleate safflower,

high-oleate sunflower, olive, and evening primrose oil) may not be due to their

unique fatty acid

compositions, but these results suggest that these vegetable oils contain

factor(s) which are

detrimental to SHRSP rats.

PMID: 9252963 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]