Latest diet/health findings

[Guest guest]

Anton : they note that butter, fatty meats etc are NOT the

way to go. Any comments?

Also moderation/variety of healthy foods is cited as the best bet for good

health. Any comments from the more stringent advocates?

People who eat a Mediterranean-style diet rich in fruit,

vegetables, whole grains, olive oil and fish have at least a

25 percent reduced risk of dying from heart disease and

cancer, researchers reported in a study being published

today.

For decades, scientists have had inklings that a diet that

derives about 40 percent of its calories from healthy fat

and about half from complex carbohydrates such as

whole grains, fruit and vegetables, combined with daily

exercise, could promote health and reduce premature

death. But this is the first large trial of healthy men and

women to demonstrate a significant reduction in death

rates for heart disease, cancer and all other causes of

mortality for those who follow a Mediterranean diet and

are physically active.

" In the past, when we talked about the Mediterranean diet,

we usually talked about cardiovascular benefits, "

Hu, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at

the Harvard School of Public Health, said yesterday.

" This is talking about primary prevention. The better the

Mediterranean diet, the lower the cardiovascular disease

and cancer mortality. . . . That is very intriguing. "

The results suggest a middle course between the often

confusing diet extremes, from the very low-carbohydrate,

high-fat Atkins approach to the higher carbohydrate,

low-fat U.S. dietary guidelines.

The findings also point to " diet as being very important in

more ways than we had anticipated, " said Walter Willett,

chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard

School of Public Health, who advocates boosting

" healthy fat " in the American diet as well as adding more

grains, fruit, vegetables and fish. (So-called healthy fats

are found in such foods as olive oil, avocados, nuts and

fish.)

The U.S government's recommendation of consuming

only 30 percent of total calories in the form of fat may

" not be optimal for many people, " Willett said. But the

study also " emphasizes that, for overall good health,

eating porterhouse steak, butter and lard is not the way to

go. "

What the results underscore is the importance of the

overall Mediterranean diet approach, rather than any one

food type. In an article that accompanies the report, which

is published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, Hu suggests that

this could be explained in two ways: Either the effects of any

one nutrient are too small to detect, or there may be synergistic effects of

the Mediterranean diet that are important.

" That's interesting, " Willett said, " because any one piece of the

Mediterranean diet on its own was not so impressive. It's the whole

package -- the fruit and vegetables, the nuts . . . all those things that

seem to contribute. "

The study involved 22,043 adults, ages 20 to 86, who live in Greece; people

with diabetes and known heart disease were excluded.

Upon entering the study, participants were interviewed in depth about

their daily diets and exercise habits. The researchers assigned

points for each component of diet and lifestyle. For example, eating

vegetables, legumes and beans, fruit, nuts, whole grains (in cereal,

bread and pasta) and fish raised the scores. So did consuming more

monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, rather than saturated fats,

such as butter or cream.

Participants also received a point for drinking moderate amounts of alcohol

-- about a glass of wine a day for women; two glasses for

men -- but got a zero if they imbibed more or less than that. Regularly

eating meat, poultry, sweets and dairy products, which in Greece

are generally high in saturated fat, added no points and resulted in a lower

overall diet score.

The research team, which was led by Antonia Trichopoulou of the University

of Athens Medical School and Dimitrios Trichopoulos of

the Harvard School of Public Health, then tracked participants for an

average of nearly four years. They also took into account age, sex,

years of education, smoking status, body mass index (to gauge overweight and

obesity) and waist-to-hip ratios, which help determine the

risk for heart disease and diabetes.

The study found that the higher the healthy diet score, the lower the risk

of death. For every two-point rise -- achieved, for example, by

eating a lot of vegetables and consuming beans and nuts daily -- the risk

of death dropped by 25 percent, the study found.

" This says you can get tremendous benefit from simply moving away from

unhealthy foods, and there are multiple ways that you can

achieve this, " Hu said.

Daily physical activity also played a critical role in reducing mortality

from heart disease and cancer, the study found. People who

engaged in at least an hour a day of very vigorous activity, either on the

job or at leisure, had a 28 percent reduced risk of mortality

compared with their more sedentary counterparts.

The effects of physical activity " cannot be overemphasized, " Hu said.

The findings echo the results of smaller studies, including the Lyon Diet

Heart Study in France, that have hinted at the health benefits of

the Mediterranean lifestyle. In the Lyon trial, researchers randomly

assigned 605 people diagnosed with heart disease to follow either a

Mediterranean-style diet or the American Heart Association diet, which

derives about 30 percent of calories from fat, including 10 percent

or less from saturated fat.

In this study, people assigned to the Mediterranean group were encouraged to

eat more fruit, vegetables and fish, to cut back on red meat

and to use olive oil instead of butter and cream.

The study found that the Mediterranean diet group suffered 73 percent fewer

heart attacks or other heart-related problems and had 70

percent fewer deaths than those on the heart association diet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33604-2003Jun25.html?nav=hptc

_h

[Guest guest]

I especially like this statement from the study which many of us on the

support list have been advocating for years. This gives credence to the

theory that just changing WHAT you eat and without even cutting calories

will enhance your health:

" .......... you can get tremendous benefit from simply moving away from

unhealthy foods, and there are multiple ways that you can

achieve this, " Hu said.